Marah Ellis Ryan

“ Why should you want a Judas? It is a sweetheart I must find for you instead.”
“I am not getting up,” said Tula stolidly. “I am kneeling before you, my General. See! I pray to you on the tiles for that Judas. All the women are praying. Also the old women have made medicine to send El Aleman once more on this trail, and see you,––it has come to pass! You have him in your trap, but he is ours. Excellency, come once and see all the women on their knees before the saint as I am here by you. We make prayers for one thing:––the Judas for our holy day!” ”

“ Pike had white hair and to her mind was, like her father, to be protected from responsibilities, but Rhodes loomed strong and kind, and braced by youth for any task.
Rhodes looked at her pityingly, and patted her head.
“I reckon we’re all a little loco, kid,” he observed. “You’re so paralyzed with the hell you saw, and his ravings that you think his dope of the gold is all gospel, but it’s only a dream, sister,––a sick man’s fancy, though you sure had me going for a minute, plum hypnotized by the picture.”
“It is to hide always,” she said. “No man must know. No other eyes must see, only you!” ”

“ It would take years of systematic search to cover even half the visible range. A man could devote a long lifetime to a fruitless search there, and then some straying burro might uncover it for an Indian herder who would fill his poncho, and make a sensation for a week or two, and never find the trail again!
“It’s just luck!” said Kit thinking it all over as he tramped along the arroya bed, “it either belongs to you, or it doesn’t. No man on earth can buy it and make it stay, but if it is yours, no man can keep you from it entirely.” ”

“ To hottest hell with your padrone and you! Bring him here to listen to me. This is no affair of a man and a woman,––curse her witch eyes and their green fires! There is work afoot,––big work, and I must get back to Soledad. You know what goes over the trail to Soledad,––every Indian knows! It is the cache of ammunition with which to save the peon and Indian slave,––you know that! You know the revolutionists must get it to win in Sonora. A trap is set for tomorrow, a big trap! I must be there to help spring it. ”

“ Kit could not even guess at all the tempestuous background of the drama enacted there in the chill of the chapel at sunrise, but the clash of those two outlaw souls suddenly on guard before each other, thrilled him by the unexpected. Rotil, profane, ruthless, and jeering, had suddenly grown still before the face of a woman from whom he turned away.
“Late! An hour late!” he grumbled, hobbling back to the plaza. “What did I tell you? Hell of women! Well, your damned little crane got what she started after––huh! Why did she lie?” ”

“ It is easy to be too clever, and on a trail of war no one has time to learn if tricks are of harm or not. Take the warning of a friend, Capitan Rhodes!”
“You have the right of it, General. I have much to learn,” agreed Kit. “But no man goes abroad to shout the crimes he is accused of at home,––and the story of this one is very new to me. This morning I learned I was thought guilty, and tonight I learn who is the criminal, and how the job was done. This is quick work, and I owe the luck of it to you.”
“May the good luck hold!” said Rotil. ”

“ We should have stuck to a white man’s land, north into Arizona where the Three Hills of Gold are waiting, to say nothing of the Lost Stone Cabin mine, lost not twenty miles from Quartzite, and in plain sight of Castle Dome. Now there is nothing visionary about that, Kit! Why, I knew an old-timer who freighted rich ore out of that mine thirty years ago, and even the road to it has been lost for years! We know things once did exist up in that country, Kit, and down here we are all tangled up with Mexican-Indian stories of ghosts and enchantments, and such vagaries. ”

“ Doña Jocasta herself had asked no question and taken no interest in them. Stripped of all sign of wealth and in chains, she had ridden into Soledad, and in comfort and much courtesy she was being conducted elsewhere. How long it might endure she did not know, and no power of hers could change the fact that she had been made wife of José Perez;––and at any turn of any road luck might again be with his wishes, and her estate fall to any level he choose to enforce. ”

“ Conrad was to them the pale beast whipping women into slavery,––and as supreme traitor to human things must be given a Judas death!
He shivered as he listened, and looked at the eyes of women staring out of the dusk for the answer to their prayers.
“Por Dios!” muttered Rotil, half turning to Kit, yet losing nothing of the pleading strained faces. “Does your head catch all of that, señor? Can’t women beat hell? And women breed us all! What’s the answer?”
“In this case it’s up to you, General,” replied Kit. “I’m glad the responsibility is not mine. ”

“ Only people of importance should speak with a soldier who is a general.”
“No, por Dios, my boy, you speak well!” said Rotil, clapping his hand on her shoulder, “but your years are not many and it cannot be you know the thing you ask for.”
“I know it,” asserted Tula with finality.
An old woman got up stiffly, and came towards him. “We are very poor, yet even our children are robbed from us––that is why we pray. Don Ramon, your mother was simple as we, and had heart for the poor. Our lives are wasted for the masters, and our women children are stolen for the sons of masters. ”

“ The padre evidently knew, but none of Rotil’s men. It could not be the mere irregularity of her life with Perez, for to the peon mind she was the great lady of a great hacienda, and wife of the padrone. No,––he realized that the sin of Doña Jocasta had been a different thing, and that the shadow of it enveloped her as a dark cloak of silence.
“It is true, señora, that death pays no one, except that the death of one man may save other lives more valuable. That often happens,” remarked Kit, with the idea of distracting her from her own woe, whatever it was. ”

“ It is El Pajarito coming again to Mesa Blanca, but coming with dust in your mouth and no song! Enter, señor, and take your rest in your own house. None are left to do you honor but me,––all gone like that!” and his skinny black hands made a gesture as if wafting the personnel of Mesa Blanca on its way. “The General Rotil has need the cattle, and makes a divide with Señor Whitely and all go,––all the herds,” and he pointed east. ”

“ Jocasta regarded him as if waiting further speech, but none came.
“That is better,” she said. “No one wishes to do you harm, but you need a lesson very badly. Now Marto Cavayso,––if that be your name!––why did you carry me away? Was it your own doing, or were you under orders of your General Rotil?”
“I should have let the men have you,” he muttered. “I was a bewitched man, or you never would have traveled alive to see Soledad. Rotil? Do not the handsome women everywhere offer him love and comradeship? Would he risk a good man to steal a woman of whom José Perez is tired?” ”

“ They tell him that he is to be a governor by their help;––that is a rich bait to float before the eyes of a man! His feet are set on a trail made by Adolph Conrad,––He is trapped, and there is no going back. Poison and shame and slavery and death have come upon that trail like black mushrooms grown in a night, and what the end of the trail will be is hid in the heart of God.”
“But your sympathy is with those women in slavery there in the south, and not with the evil friend of José Perez?” asked Kit. ”

“ The eyes of Rotil closed in a curious, contemptuous smile.
“You are young, boy,” he said at last, “and even we who are not so young are often fooled by women. Trust any woman of the camp rather than the devout saints of the shrines. All are for market,––but you pay most for the saint, and sorrow longest for her. And you never forget that the shrine is empty!”
His tone was mocking and harsh, but Kit preferred to ignore the sudden change of manner for which there seemed no cause.
“Thanks for the warning, General, and no saints for me!” ”

“ Thus brooded Rotil, unlearned driver of burros and general of an army of the people!
“We will forget all but the ammunition,” he said. “It is as food to my men, and some of them are starving there to the east; with ammunition food can be commandeered. I knew the guns were on Soledad land, but even a golden dream of angels would not have let me hope for as much as you have given me. It is packed,––that room, from floor to roof tiles. In the morning I take the trail, and there is much to be done before I go. ”

“ In the far-away time when the giant aliso had flourished there by the cañon stream, its height might have served to mark the special ravine where it grew, but the lightning sent by pagan gods had annihilated that landmark forever, and there was no other.
The glint of tears shone in the eyes of Tula, and she rode with downcast eyes, crooning a vagrant Indian air in which there were bird calls, and a whimpering long-drawn tremulo of a baby coyote caught in a trap, a weird ungodly improvisation to hear even with the shining sun warming the world. ”

“ Ugly Chappo came shyly forward and, uncovered, touched the hem of her skirt to his lips.
“The high heart of the excellencia gives life to the men who fight,” he said and thrust his hand in a pocket fastened to his belt. “This is to you from the Deliverer, señora. His message is that it brought to him the lucky trail, and he would wish the same to the Doña Jocasta Perez.”
It was the little cross, once sent back to her by a peon in bitterness of soul, and now sent by a general of Mexico with the blessing of a soldier. ”

“ Each minute of the long days, Rhodes worked steadily and gaily, picking out the high grade ore from the old Indian mine, and every possible night he and the burro and Tula made a trip out to the foot of the range, where they buried their treasure against the happy day when they could go out of the silent desert content for the time with what gold they could carry in secret to the border.
For two days he had watched the Soledad ranch house rather closely through the field glass, for there was more activity there than before; men in groups rode in who were not herding. ”

“ That is why we lost two days,––our car was put on a side track, and for the sick it was worse than to walk the desert.”
“Yes; well?”
“Doña Dolores got in a fine carriage there. Madre de Dios! what horses! White as snow on the sierras, and gold on all the harness! Me, I am dreaming of them since that hour! They got in, Tula also in her poor dress, and a guard told me to follow the carriage. It was as if San Gabriel made me invitation to enter heaven! Twenty miles we went through that plantation, a deep sea of cane, señor, and maize of a tree size,––the richness there is riches of a king. ”

“ Once in the corridor she looked into Valencia’s room, then in the kitchen where Valencia and Maria and other women were hastening breakfast, and last she sought Clodomiro at the corral.
“Where did you take her, and how?” she demanded, and the youth, tired with the endless rides and tasks of two days and nights, was surly, and looked his impatience. “She, and she, and she! Always women!” he grumbled. “Have I not herded all of them from over the mesa at your order? Is one making a slow trail, and must I go herding again?” ”

“ My men rounded up Perez and his German slaver at Soledad today––yesterday now!––and when we rode up the little cañon to be in at the finish what did we see but an escape with a woman? Some word had come my way of a Perez woman there, and only one thought was with me, that the woman had helped Perez out of the trap as quickly as he had ridden into it! After that there was nothing to do but catch them again. No thought came to me that Marto might be stealing a woman for himself, the fool! Perez made better time than we figured on, and is a day ahead. ”

“ They are my guns,––my money paid, but he is not straight! Here at Soledad he was to show me this time, but I think now it was a trick to murder me as he murdered Juan Gonsalvo, the foreman who stored them away for him.”
“Animal!” growled Perez. “You have lost your head to talk of murders to me! Two murders at Granados are waiting for you, and it is not far to ship you back to the border! Walk with care, señor!”
“You are each wasting time with your truth telling,” stated Rotil. “This is no time to count your dead men. It is the count of the guns I want. And a sight of the ammunition.” ”

“ Kit had heard three men, including Isidro, speak of Doña Jocasta, and each had mentioned the wonderful green eyes––no one ever seemed to forget them!
Their magnetism had caught the attention of Don José,––a distinguished and illustrious person in the eyes of the barefoot mountaineers. No one knew what Jocasta thought of the exalted padrone of the wide lands, whose very spurs were of gold, but she knew there was scarce wealth enough in all the village to keep a candle burning on the Virgin’s shrine, and her feet had never known a shoe. ”