Starr, of the Desert

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE TRAIL OF SILVERTOWN CORDS

  Having wasted a couple of hours more than he intended to spend indelivering the dog, Starr called upon Rabbit to make up those two hoursfor him. And, being an extremely misleading little gray horse, with asurprising amount of speed and endurance stored away under his hide,Rabbit did not fall far short of doing so.

  Starr had planned an unexpected visit to the Medina ranch. In the guiseof stock-buyer his unexpectedness would be perfectly plausible, and hewould be well pleased to arrive there late, so long as he did not arriveafter dark. Just before sundown would do very well, he decided. He wouldcatch Estan Medina off his guard, and he would have the evening beforehim, in case he wanted to scout amongst the arroyos on the way home.

  Starr very much wanted to know who drove an automobile without lightsinto isolated arroyos and over the desert trails at night. He had not,strange to say, seen any machine with Silvertown cord tires in San Bonitoor in Malpais, though he had given every car he saw the second glance tomake sure. He knew that such tires were something new and expensive, somuch so that they were not in general use in that locality. Even in ElPaso they were rarely seen at that time, and only the fact that the greatman who gave him his orders had happened to be using them on his machine,and had mentioned the fact to Starr, who was honored with his friendship,had caused Starr to be familiar with them and to recognize instantly theimpress they left in soft soil. It was a clue, and that was the best hecould say for it. It was just a little better than nothing, he decided.What he wanted most was to see the machine itself at close range, and tosee the men who rode in it--and I am going to tell you why.

  There was a secret political movement afoot in the Southwest; a movementhidden so far underground as to be practically unnoticed on the surface;but a movement, nevertheless, that had been felt and recorded by thatpolitical seismograph, the Secret Service of our Government. It had beenlearned, no mere citizen may know just how, that the movement was calledthe Mexican Alliance. It was suspected that the object was therestoration of three of our States to Mexico, their original owner.Suspected, mind you; and when even the Secret Service can do no more thansuspect, you will see how well hidden was the plot. Its extent and itsramifications they could only guess at. Its leaders no man could name,nor even those who might be suspected more than others.

  But a general uprising in three States, in conjunction with, and underthe control of, a concerted, far-sweeping revolution across the border,would not be a thing to laugh over. Uncle Sam smiled tolerantly when somewould have had him chastise. Uncle Sam smiled, and watched, and waitedand drummed his fingers while he read secret reports from men away outsomewhere in Arizona, and New Mexico, and Texas, and urged them to burrowdeeper and deeper underground, and to follow at any cost the moleliketwistings and blind turnings of this plot to steal away three wholeStates in a lump.

  Now you see, perhaps, why Starr was so curious about that automobile, andwhy he was interested in Estancio Medina, Mexican-American rancher whoowned much land and many herds, and who was counted a power among hiscountrymen; who spoke English with what passed for fluency, and who hadvery decided and intelligent opinions upon political matters, and whoboldly proclaimed his enthusiasm for the advancement of his own race.

  But he did not go to the Medina ranch that evening, for the very goodreason that he met his man fair in the trail as it looped around the headof the draw where he had heard the automobile running without lights. Ason that other evening, Starr had cut straight across the loop, going eastinstead of west. And where the trail forked on the farther side he metEstan Medina driving a big, lathery bay horse hitched to a shiny, newcovered buggy. He seemed in a hurry, but he pulled up nevertheless tohave a word with Starr. And Starr, always observant of details, saw thathe had three or four packages in the bottom of the buggy, which seemed tobear out Estan's statement that he had been to town, meaning San Bonito.

  Starr rolled a cigarette, and smoked it while he gossiped with Estan ofpolitics, pretty girls, and the price of mutton. He had been eyeing thenew buggy speculatively, and at last he spoke of it in that admiring tonewhich warms the heart of the listener.

  "Some turnout, Estan," he summed up. "But you ought to be driving anautomobile. All your friends are getting them."

  Estan lifted his shoulders in true Spanish fashion and smiled. "No,amigo. Me, I can take pleasure yet from horses. And the madre, she's so'fraid of them automobiles. She cries yet when she knows I ride in one alittle bit. Now she's so proud, when I drive the new buggy home! Shefolds so pretty her best mantilla over her head and rides with me tochurch, and she bows so polite--to all the senoras from the new buggy!And her face shines with the happiness in her heart. Oh, no, not me forthe big automobile!" He smiled and shrugged and threw out his hands. "Ilike best to see my money walking around with wool on the back! Excuse,senor. I go now to bring the new buggy home and to see the smile of mymother." Then he bethought him of the tradition of his house. "You comeand have a soft bed and the comfort of my house," he urged. "It is far toSan Bonito, and it is not so far to my house."

  Starr explained plausibly his haste, sent a friendly message to themother and Luis, and rode on thoughtfully. Now and then he turned toglance behind him at the dust cloud rolling rapidly around the headof the draw.

  Since Estan had been to town himself that day, Starr reasoned thatthere would not be much gained by scouting through the arroyos that lednear the Medina ranch. Estan would have seen in town the men he wantedto see. He could do so easily enough and without exciting the leastsuspicion; for San Bonito had plenty of saloons that were popular, andyet unobtrusive, meeting places. No need for the mysterious automobileto make the long journey through the sand to-day, if Estan Medina werethe object of the visit, and Starr knew of no other Mexican out thatway who would be important enough to have a hand in the mixing ofpolitical intrigue.

  He rode on, letting Rabbit drop into his poco-poco trail trot. He carriedhis head bent forward a little, and his eyebrows were pulled into a scowlof concentrated thought. It was all very well to suspect Estan Medina andto keep an eye upon him, but there were others who came nearer to theheart of the plot. He wanted to know who these were, and he believed thatif he could once identify the four Mexicans whom Helen May had seen, hewould be a long step ahead. He considered the simple expedient of askingher to describe them as closely as she could. But since secrecy was thekeynote of his quest, he did not want to rouse her curiosity, and forpurely personal reasons he did want to shield her as far as possible fromany uneasiness or any entanglement in the affair.

  Thinking of Helen May in that light forced him to consider what would beher plight if he and his co-workers failed, if the plan went on to actualfulfillment, and the Mexican element actually did revolt. Babes, theywere, those two alone there in Sunlight Basin, with a single-shot"twenty-two" for defense, when every American rancher in three Statesconsidered high-power rifles and plenty of ammunition as necessary in hishome as flour and bacon!

  Starr shivered a little and tried to pull his mind away from Helen Mayand her helplessness. At any rate, he comforted himself, they had the dogfor protection, the dog who had been trained to jump the corral fence atany hour of the night if a stranger, and especially a Mexican cameprowling near.

  But he and his co-workers must not fail. If intrigue burrowed deep, thenthey must burrow deeper.

  So thinking, he came just after sundown to where the trail branched inthree directions. One was the direct road to San Bonito, another took aroundabout way through a Mexican settlement on the river and so came tothe town from another angle, and the third branch wound over the graniteridge to Malpais. Studying the problem as a whole, picturing the havocwhich an uprising would wreak upon those vast grazing grounds of thesouthwest, and how two nations would be embroiled in spite of themselves,he was hoping that his collaborators, scattered here and there throughthe country, men whose names even he did not know, were making moreheadway than he seemed to be making here.
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  He would not know, of course, unless he were needed to assist or tosupplement their work in some way. But he hoped they had found outsomething definite, something which the War Department could take holdof; a lever, as it were, to pry up the whole scheme. He was thinking ofthese things, but his mind was nevertheless alert to the little trailsigns which it had become second nature to read. So he saw, there in thedust of the trail, where a buggy had turned around and gone back whenceit had come. He saw that it had been traveling toward town but had turnedand come back. And looking more closely, he saw that one horse had pulledthe buggy.

  He stopped to make sure of that and to search for footprints. But thosehe found were indistinct, blurred partly by the looseness of the sand andpartly by the sparse grass that grew along the trail there, because thebuggy had turned in a hollow. He went on a couple of rods, and he sawwhere an automobile had also come to this point and had turned and goneback toward town, or rather, it had swung sharply around and taken thetrail which led through the Mexican settlement; but he guessed that ithad gone back to town, for all that. And the tire marks were made bySilvertown cords.

  Starr stopped and looked back to where the buggy tracks were faintlyoutlined in the dust of the hollow, and he spoke aloud his thought:"You'd think, just to see him and talk to him, that Estan Medinaassays one hundred per cent, satisfied farmer. He's sure somefox--that same greaser!" After that he shook Rabbit into a long,distance-eating lope for town.

  Night came with its flaring forerunners of purple and crimson and all thegorgeous blendings of the two. By the time he reached San Bonito, thestars were out, and the electric lights were sputtering on certain streetcorners. Starr had rented a small adobe cabin and a corral with a shed onthe outskirts of town where his movements might be unobserved. He did notalways use these, but stopped frequently at a hotel with a garrulouslandlord, and stabled his horse at a certain livery which he knew to be ahotbed of the town's gossip. In both places he was a privileged patronand was the recipient of many choice bits of scandal whispered behind aprudent palm, with a wink now and then to supply the finer shades ofmeaning. But to-night he chose the cabin and the corral sandwichedbetweena transfer company's warehouse and a steam laundry that had been closedby the sheriff. The cabin fronted on a street that was seldom used, andthe corral ran back to a dry arroyo that was used mainly as a dump forthe town's tin cans and dead cats and such; not a particularly attractiveplace but secluded.

  He turned Rabbit into the corral and fed him, went in and cooked himselfsome supper, and afterwards, in a different suit and shoes and a hat thatspoke loudly of the latest El Paso fad in men's headgear, he strolleddown to the corner and up the next street to the nearest garage.Ostensibly he was looking for one Pedro Miera, who had a large sheepranch out east of San Bonito, and who always had fat sheep for sale.Starr considered it safe to look for Miera, whom he had seen two or threedays before in El Paso just nicely started on a ten-day spree that neverstopped short of the city jail.

  Since it was the dull hour between the day's business and the evening'spleasure, Starr strolled the full length of the garage and back againbefore any man spoke to him. He made sure that no car there had the kindof tires he sought, so he asked if Miera and his machine had showed upthere that day, and left as soon as the man said no.

  San Bonito was no city and it did not take long to make the round of thegarages. No one had seen Miera that day, and Starr's disappointment wasquite noticeable, though misunderstood. Not a car in any of the fourgarages sported Silvertown cords.

  At the last garage an arc light flared over the wide doorway. Starr,feeling pretty well disgusted, was leaving when he saw a tire trackalongside the red, gasoline filling-pump. He stopped and, under cover oflighting his cigarette, he studied the tread. Beyond all doubt the car hewanted had stopped there for gas. But the garage man was a Mexican, soStarr dared not risk a question or show any interest whatever in the carwhose tires left those long-lined imprints to tell of its passing. Hepuffed at his cigarette until he had studied the angle of the front-wheeltrack and decided that the car must have been headed south, and that ithad made a rather short turn away from the pump.

  This was puzzling for a while. The driver might have been turning aroundto go back the way he had come. But it was more likely that he had driveninto the cross street to the west. He strolled over that way, but thelight was too dim to trace automobile tracks in the dust of the street sohe went back to the adobe cabin and put in the next hour oiling andcleaning and polishing a 25-35 carbine which he meant to give Helen May,and in filling a cartridge belt with shells.

  He sat for some time turning two six-shooters over in his hands, tryingto decide which would please her most. One was lighter than the other,with an easier trigger action; almost too easy for a novice, he toldhimself. But it had a pearl handle with a bulldog carved on the side thatwould show when the gun was in its holster. She'd like that fancy stuff,he supposed. Also he could teach her to shoot straighter with that light"pull." But the other was what Starr called a sure-enough go-getter.

  He finally decided, of course, to give her the fancy one. For Vic hewould have to buy a gun; an automatic, maybe. He'd have to talk coyotespretty strong, in order to impress it upon them that they must never goaway anywhere without a gun. Good thing there was a bounty on coyotes;the money would look big to the kid, anyway. It occurred to him furtherthat he could tell them there was danger of running into a rabid coyote.Rabies had caused a good deal of trouble in the State, so he could makethe danger plausible enough.

  He did not worry much over frightening the girl. She had nerve enough.Think of her tackling that ranch proposition, with just that cub brotherto help! When Starr thought of that slim, big-eyed, smiling girl in whitefighting poverty and the white plague together out there on the rim ofthe desert, a lump came up in his throat. She had nerve enough--thatplucky little lady with the dull-gold hair, and the brown velveteyes!--more nerve than he had where she was concerned.

  He went to bed and lay for a long time thinking of Helen May out therein that two-roomed adobe cabin, with a fifteen-year-old boy forprotection and miles of wilderness between her and any other humanhabitation. It was small comfort then to Starr that she had the dog. Onebullet can settle a dog, and then--Starr could not look calmly at thepossibility of what might happen then.

  "They've no business out there like that, alone!" he muttered, rising toan elbow and thumping his hard pillow viciously. "Good Lord! Haven't theygot any folks?"