“His blazing black eyes stared into the gaze of Ross”

THE MESA TRAIL

BY

H. BEDFORD-JONES

GARDEN CITY — NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF

TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,

INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1919,

BY STREET & SMITH CORPORATION

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I—THE MAN WHO HAD BEEN

A ribbon of winding road leads northeast from the pueblo of Domingo and the snaky Bajada hill where gray rocks lie thickly; it is a yellowish ribbon of road, sweeping over the gigantic mesa toward Santa Fé and the sweetly glowing Blood of Christ peaks—great peaks of green spearing into the sky, white-crested, and tipped with blood at sunset.

Along this ribbon of dusty yellow road was crawling a flivver. It was crawling slowly, in a jerky series of advances and pauses; as it crept along its intermittent course, the woman who sat behind the wheel was cursing her iron steed in a thorough and heartfelt manner.

Both in flivver and woman was that which fired curious interest. The rear of the car was piled high with boxes and luggage; certain of the boxes were marked “Explosives—Handle With Care!” Prominent among this freight was a burlap sack tied about the neck and firmly roped to one of the top supports of the car.

The woman was garbed in ragged but neat khaki. From beneath the edges of an old-fashioned bonnet, tied beneath the chin, protruded wisps of grayish hair, like an aureole of silver. The woman herself was of strikingly large frame and great in girth; her arms, bare to the elbows, were huge in size. Yet this giantess was not unhealthily fat. Hardened by toil, her hands were gripped carefully upon the steering wheel as though she were in some fear of wrenching it asunder in an unguarded moment.

Her features were large, sun-darkened, creased and seamed with crow’s-feet that betokened long exposure to wind and weather. Ever and anon she drew, with manifest enjoyment, at an old brown corncob pipe. Above her firm lips and beak-like nose a pair of blue eyes struck out gaily and keenly at the world; eyes of a piercing, intense blue, whose brilliancy, as of living jewels, gave the lie to their surrounding tokens of toil and age.

“Drat it!” she burst forth, after a new bucking endeavour on the part of the car. “If I was to shoot this damned thing through the innards, maybe she’d quit sunfishin’ on me! I’m goin’ to sell her to Santy Fé sure’s shooting; I’ll get me a pair o’ mules and a wagon, then I’ll know what I’m doing. Dunno how come I ever was roped into buying this here contraption——”

She suddenly halted her observations. Laying aside her pipe and peering out from the side of the dusty windshield, her keen eyes narrowed upon the road ahead.

Against that yellowish ribbon, with its bordering emptiness of mesquite, greasewood, and sage, there was nothing moving; but squarely in the centre of the road showed up a dark, motionless blotch. It was the figure of a man lying as though asleep. No man would or could lie asleep in the middle of this road, however, under the withering blaze of the downpouring New Mexico sun.

Suddenly the fitful flivver coughed under more gas; it roared, bucked, darted ahead, bucked again, and a dozen yards from the prostrate man it went leaping forward as though impelled by vindictive spite to run over the motionless figure. The woman swore savagely. She seemed inexperienced as a chauffeuse; only by a hair’s breadth did she manage to avoid the man, and then she stopped the car.

Her great size became more apparent as she alighted. Standing, she gazed down at the man, then leaned forward and turned the unfortunate vagrant upon his back. The body was listless to her hand, the head lolled idly.

“Hm!” said the woman, reflectively. “Ain’t drunk. Ain’t hurt. Hm!”

She reached into the car and produced a whiskey flask, then sat down in the dust and took upon her ample lap the head of the senseless man. A sudden deftness became manifest in her motions, an unguessed tenderness relieved the harshness of her features.

“This here is breakin’ the law,” she ruminated, pouring liquor between the lips of the vagrant, “but it ain’t the first time Mehitabel Crump has broke laws to help some poor devil! Hm! Looks to me like he ain’t et for quite a spell.”

With increasing interest she surveyed the slowly reviving stranger.

He was fully as lank as she was stout, and must have stood a good six foot two in height. His clothes were tattered remnants of once sober black. Long locks of iron-gray hair hung about his ears. His features were careworn and haggard, yet in them lingered some indefinable suggestion of fine lines and deeply carven strength. Had Mehitabel Crump ever viewed Sir Henry Irving—which she had not—she might have guessed a few things about her “find.”

Suddenly the eyes, the intensely black eyes, of the man opened. So did his lips.

“Angels and ministers of grace!” His voice, although faint, was touched with a deep intonation, a roundness of the vowels, a clarity of accent. “As I do live and breathe, it is the kiss of lordly Bacchus which doth welcome me!”

“Take it calm,” advised Mehitabel Crump, pityingly. “You’ll have your right sense pretty soon. Many’s the time I’ve seen Crump keeled over, and come to with his mind awandering. Jest take it calm, pilgrim. I’ll have a bite o’ cornbread——”

She lowered his head to the dust, rose, and went to the flivver. Presently she returned with a slab of cold cornbread divided by bacon, and a desert water bottle.

“Heaps o’ lunch in the car.” She aided the gaunt one to sit up, and he clutched at the food feverishly. “My land! Ain’t et real frequent lately, have ye?”

The man, his mouth full, shook his head dumbly. About his eyes was a brilliancy which told of sheer starvation. To the full as worldly wise as any person in broad New Mexico, the woman asked no questions as yet; she procured from the car a basket which contained the remainder of her luncheon, and set forth the contents.

“Figgered I might get held up ’fore reaching Santy Fé. If it warn’t that dratted car, it sure would be something else, which same it is. Damned good luck it ain’t worse, as Crump used to say when Providence went agin’ him.”

She observed that the stranger ate ravenously, but drank sparingly. Not thirst had downed him, but starvation.

He seemed startled at her disconcertingly frank manner of speech. She put him down as something better than an ordinary hobo; an out-of-luck Easterner, possibly a lunger. He was fifty or so; with decent clothes, a shave, and a haircut, he might be a striking-looking fellow, she decided. Although he had a hard mouth, what Mehitabel Crump had learned to know as a whiskey mouth, it was steady lipped.

“You sure played in tough luck comin’ this road,” she said, musingly. “So did I. Ain’t nothing between here and Santy Fé ’cept Injuns, greasers, and rattlers, any one of which is worse’n the other two. These rocks is playin’ hell with my tires and the old Henry is coughin’ fit to bust her innards. If I find the feller who sold her to me, I’d sure lay him one over the ear!”

Her simple meal finished, she began to stuff her corncob pipe. The man, still eating wolfishly, watched her with fascinated eyes. She gazed out at the snowy, sun-flooded Sangre de Cristo peaks and continued her soliloquy. When it suited her, Mehitabel Crump could be very garrulous; and when it suited her, she could be as taciturn as the mountains themselves.

“I ain’t surprised at nothing no more, not these days. No, sir! When I first come to this country you knowed just what ye had to reckon agin’. They was Injuns to fight, greasers to work devilment, claim jumpers to rob ye, and such. But now the Injuns is all towerist peddlers, the greasers is called ‘natives’ and runs the courts an’ legislature, and gun toting ain’t popular. A lone woman gets skinned plumb legal, when in the old days it would ha’ been suicide to rob a female. Yes pilgrim, set right in at what’s left, and don’t bother to talk yet a spell.”

She touched a match to her pipe, broke the match, tossed it away.

“If Crump hadn’t blowed up with a dry fuse in a shaft we was sinking over in the Mogollons, where we was prospecting at the time, he’d be plumb astonished at the changes. Yes, and I bet he’d swear to see me driving one of them contraptions yonder! Poor Crump, I never had the heart to dig him up, though it was a right smart prospect we was workin’. But somehow I couldn’t never work that claim, with him still in it that-a-way. I won’t need the money, neither, if I’ve got hold of——”

She paused. Her gaze went to the devouring stranger. Abruptly she changed the subject.

“You don’t look like you was much more’n a poor, innercent pilgrim without any brains to mention. Yet, stranger, I’d gamble that we’d stack up high in morals agin’ such old-timers as Abel Dorales, him what’s half greaser and half Mormon, or old Sandy Mackintavers, what come straight from Scotland to Arizony and made a forchin in thirty years of thieving! Yes, I reckon ye’ve got a streak of real pay dirt in ye, stranger. And if I can’t tell what breed o’ cattle a man is by jest looking at him, it’s a queer thing! I’ve knowed ’em all.”

The complimented pilgrim bolted the last scrap of food in sight, raised the canvas bag to his lips, and drank. Sighing, he wiped his lips with the frayed cuff of his sleeve. Then he disentangled his long legs and rose. One hand upon his heart, the other flourished magnificently, he made a bow that was the piteous ghost of a perished grandeur.

“Madam!” His voice rang out firmly now, a deep and sonorous bass. “Madam, I thank you! In me you behold one who has received the plaudits of thousands, one who has bowed to the thunderous acclaim of——”

“What d’ye say your name was?” snapped Mehitabel Crump. Her voice was suddenly acid, her blue eyes ice. The other was manifestly disconcerted by her change of front.

“Madam, I am familiarly known as Thaddeus Roscius Shea. Under the more imposing title of Montalembert I have made known to thousands the aspiring genius of the immortal Avonian bard. I avow it, madam—I am a Thespian! I suit the action to the word, the word to the action——”

“Huh!” cut in his audience with a ruthless lack of awe. “Huh! Never heard of them Thespians, but likely it’s a new Mormon sect. I knowed a man of your name down to Silver City twelve year back; this Thady Shea was a good fightin’ man, with one eye and a harelip. Glad to meet ye, pilgrim! I’m Mehitabel Crump, with Mrs. for a handle.”

Something in her manner seemed mightily to embarrass Mr. Shea, but he took a fresh start and set forth to conquer the difficulty.

“Madam, a Thespian is of no religious persuasion, but one who treads the boards and who wears the buskin of Thespis. You behold in me the first tragedian of the age. My Hamlet, madam, has been praised by discerning critics from Medicine Hat to Jersey City. The accursed moving pictures have ruined my art.”

“Oh! It’s usually whiskey or woman,” said Mrs. Crump, her eyes ominous. “So you’re a stage actor, eh? Then that explains it.”

“Explains, madam? Explains what?” faltered Shea, sensing a gathering storm.

“Your damn foolishness. Shake it off, ye poor hobo! I no sooner hands ye a bit o’ kindness than it swells ye up like a balloon. Now, don’t you get gay with me, savvy? Don’t come none o’ that high-falutin’ talk with me, or by hell I’ll paralyze ye! I did think for a minute that ye had the makin’s of a man, but I apologize.”

The blue eyes turned away. Had Shea been able to see them, he might have read in them a look that did not correspond to Mrs. Crump’s spoken word. But he did not see them.

He turned away from the woman. The carven lines of his face deepened, aged, as from him was rent the veil of his posturing. A weary and hopeless sadness welled in his eyes; the sadness of one who beholds around him the wreckage of all his little world, brought down to ruin by his own faults. When he spoke, it was with the same sonorous voice, yet lacking the fine rolling accent.

“You are right, Mrs. Crump, you are right. God help me! I, who was once a man, am now less than the very dust. Your harshness is justified. At this time yesterday, madam, I was a wretched drunken fool, spouting lines of rhetoric in Albuquerque.”

“I’m surprised at that,” said Mrs. Crump. “How’d ye get the liquor, since this here state an’ nation ain’t particularly wet no more? And how ye got here from Albuquerque I don’t figger.”

“It is simply told.” From the miserable Shea was stripped the last vestige of his punctured pose. “Twenty years ago my young wife died, and I started upon the whiskey trail; it has led me—here. Yesterday I came into Albuquerque, starving. At the railroad station, amid some—er—confusion, I encountered a company of those motion picture men who dare to call themselves actors. So far was my pride broken that I begged of them help in the name and memory of The Profession.”

Shea emphatically capitalized these last two words.

“They took me aboard their train,” he pursued, “and I was given drink. Some controversy arose, I know not how; I found myself ignominiously ejected from the train. I walked, not knowing nor caring whither. Nor is that all, madam. I am a fugitive from justice!”

“Broke jail?” queried Mrs. Crump, betraying signs of interest.

“No, madam. In Albuquerque I was starving and desperate. I—I stole fruit and—sandwiches—from a railroad stand.”

His voice failed. He turned away, staring at the snowy peaks as though awaiting a verdict.

“Pretty low-down and worthless, ain’t ye?” Mrs. Crump checked herself suddenly, glancing at the yellow ribbon of road over which she had so recently come. A flying cloud of dust gave notice of the approach of a large automobile.

Suddenly rising, Mrs. Crump knocked out her pipe, then caught Shea by the shoulder. Her hand swung him about as though he were a child. His eyes widened in surprise upon meeting the warm regard in her face, the steady and sympathetic smile upon her lips.

“Thady,” she said, bluntly, “how old are ye?”

“Fifty-eight,” he mumbled in astonishment.

“Huh! Two year older’n me. Made a mess of your life, ain’t ye? Don’t know as I blame ye none, Thady. When Crump passed out, I come near throwin’ up the sponge; but I got to fightin’ and I been fightin’ ever since, and here I am! Now, Thady, you got strength and you got guts; I can see it in your eye. All ye need is backbone. Why don’t ye buck up?”

“I’ve tried,” he faltered, controlled by her personality. “It’s no use——”

“You go get in that car.” Mrs. Crump glanced again at the approaching automobile, then half flung the gaunt Shea toward her dust-white flivver. “Get in and don’t say a word, savvy? One thing about you, ye can be trusted—which is more’n can be said for some skunks in this here country! Get in, now, and leave me palaver with Sheriff Tracy.”

Shea, shivering at mention of the sheriff, jack-knifed his length upon the car’s front seat.

From some mysterious recess of her ample person Mrs. Crump produced an immense old-fashioned revolver, which she began to burnish with seeming absorption. The big automobile slowed up. It halted a few feet behind the flivver, and a hearty hail came forth.

“By jingoes, if it ain’t Mis’ Crump! Hello, old-timer—ain’t seen you in ages!”

From the car sprang a hale and vigorous man who advanced with hand extended.

“I kind o’ thought it was you, Sam Tracy,” said Mrs. Crump. “Thought I recognized that there car o’ yours. How’s the folks?”

“All fine. And you? But I needn’t ask—why, you grow younger every month——”

“See here! What ye doin’ over in this county, Sam? Why don’t ye get back to Bernalillo where ye belong?”

The sheriff waved his hand.

“Going to Santy Fé. I’m looking up a fellow who came this way from Albuquerque—a hobo and sneak thief name o’ Shea. Where ye been keepin’ yourself, ma’am? It don’t seem like the same old state not to see ye from time to time.”

“Sam Tracy,” observed Mrs. Crump with a look of severity, “I’ve knowed you more years than I care to reckon up. And you know me, I guess! Now, Sam, I sure hate to do it—but I got to. Stick up your hands, Sam, and do it damn sudden!”

The muzzle of her revolver poked the astounded sheriff in the stomach. For a moment he gazed into her shrewd blue eyes, then slowly elevated his hands.

“Are you crazy, ma’am?” he demanded.

She removed his holstered weapon, then lowered her own and shook her head.

“Nope. I’m heap sane right here and now. Set down and smoke whilst I explain.”

CHAPTER II—THADY SHEA ENCOUNTERS PURPOSE

“Your man Shea is settin’ in my car yonder,” said Mrs. Crump.

Heedless of the glaring sun, she picked up her pipe and disposed her giant frame for converse. From narrowed lids the sheriff eyed the lanky, up-drawn figure of Shea, which he now noticed for the first time. Then he produced the “makings” and proceeded to roll a cigarette.

“Glad you picked him up,” said he. “I’ll take him back with me.”

“No, ye won’t,” retorted Mrs. Crump, calmly. “You’ll not touch him, Sam Tracy.”

“He’s a thief and a drunkard and a hobo,” said the sheriff.

“If they wasn’t no drinks to be had in heaven, I reckon hell would be majority choice,” quoth the lady. “When it comes to that, I’ve seen you and Crump so paralyzed you couldn’t talk. There was that night down to Magdalena when the railroad spur was finished and they held a celebration——”

The sheriff grinned. “No need to argue further along them lines, ma’am. You win!”

“I reckon I do, Sam. Besides, you ain’t got no authority over in this county. You can run a bluff on ignorant hoboes an’ greasers, but not on Mehitabel Crump! Your authority quit quite a ways back. Thady Shea only stole because he was starving, which I’d do the same in his place. I picked him up here and I’m goin’ to keep him.”

“You always was soft-hearted,” reflected Tracy. “Now you got him, what’s your programme?”

Mrs. Crump refilled and lighted her corncob with deliberation, then made response:

“Sam, I’m sure in a thunderin’ bad pinch. Damned good luck it ain’t worse, as Crump used to say at times. You know I ain’t no legal shark, huh? Well, three weeks ago I had a blamed good hole in the hills, until Abel Dorales come along and located just below me. Then in rides old Sandy Mackintavers and offers a thousand even for my hole, saying that Abel had located the thrown apex of my claim——”

“The apex law don’t obtain here,” put in Tracy.

“I know it; but who’s goin’ to argue with Mackintavers? If it wasn’t that, it’d be somethin’ worse. Anyhow, he offered to compromise and so on.”

The sheriff nodded. “I see how you come to have the flivver,” he observed, drily.

“Yas, ye do!” Mrs. Crump’s response was raw-edged. “If you was the kind o’ man you used to be, ye’d up and give them jumpers a hemp necktie! But now ye play politics, Sam Tracy, and ye lick the boots o’ Sandy Mackintavers——”

“That’s enough, Mis’ Crump!” broke in the sheriff, icily. “I don’t blame ye for feelin’ sore, but the likes of us can’t fight Mackintavers in the courts. We ain’t slick enough! And Dorales is a Mormon-bred greaser, than which the devil ain’t never fathered a worse combination. Now, Mis’ Crump, you show me the least excuse for doin’ it legally, and I’ll pump them two men full o’ lead any day! I’m only surprised that you didn’t do it.”

“I did.” A smile of grim satisfaction wreathed the lady’s firm lips. “First I took Sandy’s money, then I lets fly. They was several hired greasers with Dorales, and I reckon I got two-three; ain’t right sure. I only got Abel glancingly, and when I threw down on Sandy his arms was both elevated for safety. All I could decently do was to nick his ear so’s he’d remember me.”

“You didn’t kill Dorales?”

“Afraid not.” Mrs. Crump sadly shook her head. “I didn’t wait to inquire none, but it looked like I’d only blooded his shoulder and he was layin’ low to plug me in the back, so I belted him over the head with the butt, and slid for home.”

The sheriff, astounded, emitted a long whistle. “Whew-w!” he said, slowly. “Say, whereabouts did all this happen?”

“Down the Mogollons. Over Arizony way.”

“Why didn’t ye go west into Arizony, then? After that doin’s this state will be too hot to hold ye——”

“Oh, Sandy won’t go to law over the shootin’. It’d make him look too ridic’lous.”

The sheriff threw back his head and laughed with all the uproarious abandon of a man who laughs seldom but well.

“Best look out for yourself,” he cautioned. “That there Dorales will be on your trail till hell freezes over, ma’am! I sure would admire to see you in action on that crowd!”

“You’ll see me in action when that there car gets movin’ again,” she retorted. “She bucks like a range hoss and kicks to beat hell—why, I couldn’t hardly keep the saddle!”

The sheriff arose and went to the dust-white flivver. He adjusted the spark, cranked, and for a moment listened to the engine before killing it. Then he threw back the hood, and, under the sombre eyes of Thady Shea, worked in silence. At length he finished his task, started the engine again, and with a nod of satisfaction shut it off.

“Thought mebbe so,” he stated, rejoining the lady. “Your spark plugs was fouled. Well, ma’am, what can I be doin’ for you?”

“Ye might send me a wire in care of Coravel Tio whenever ye get a line on Dorales or Mackintavers. I’m fixing to meet them again.”

“How come?” demanded the sheriff in surprise.

Mrs. Crump gestured with her pipe toward the flivver.

“I got a sack of ore in there that I found in the lava beds or thereabouts. I suspicions it’s one o’ these new-fangled things nobody give a whoop for in the old days, but that draws down the money now. If it is, then you can lay that Sandy will hear I’ve found it, and he’ll be after me to jump the claim.”

“He sure does keep a line on prospectors,” reflected the sheriff. “And skins ’em, too, mostly. But he does it legal.”

“Yep. If this here stuff is any good, Sam, they’s going to be some smoke ’fore he gets his paws on it! Where you goin’ from here? Back to Albuquerque?”

“Nope. I got some business up at the capital.”

“Will ye tote that ore sack and a letter up to Coravel Tio for me—and do it strictly under your hat?”

“You bet I will, ma’am!”

Mrs. Crump unstrapped the burlap sack. With the sheriff’s pencil and paper she settled down to write a letter. The process was obviously painful and laborious, but at length it was finished. The sheriff shook hands, picked up the sack, and turned to his car. Mrs Crump had already restored him his revolver.

“Take good care of yourself, ma’am—and your hobo! Adios.”

Mrs. Crump watched the trail of dust disappear in the direction of Santa Fé, then she turned to the flivver and looked up at Thady Shea.

“They’s a new corncob laying in back somewheres. You can have it, Thady. Get out here and settle down for a spell o’ talk. If ye act real good I’ll give ye a drink.”

“I don’t want any,” came Shea’s muffled voice as he leaned back in search of the pipe.

“That’s a lie. You’re fair shaking for liquor and a drop will brace ye up.”

Shea procured the pipe, filled and lighted, and promptly assumed, as a garment, his usual histrionic pose. The gulp of liquor which Mrs. Crump carefully measured out sent a thin thread of colour into his gaunt, unshaven cheeks.

“Madam, I owe you all,” he announced sonorously. “I have not missed the heart of things set forth in this your discourse to the sheriff’s ear, and I have gathered that your need is great for the strong arms of friends, the counsel wise——”

“You got it,” cut in Mrs. Crump, curtly. “The p’int is, Thady, where do you come in? Listen here, now! I got a good eye for men; ye ain’t much account as ye stand, but ye got the makin’s. Now cut out the booze and I’ll take ye for partner, savvy? What’s more, I’ll spend a couple o’ weeks attending to it that ye do cut out the booze! I sure need a partner who ain’t liable to sell me out to them heathen. Can ye down the booze, or not?”

Something in her tone cut through the man’s posturing like a knife. As a matter of fact, he was miserable in spirit; his soul quivered nakedly before him, and he was ashamed. For a space he did not answer, but stared at the far mountains. The strong tragedy of his face was accentuated and deepened into utter bitterness.

What Mrs. Crump had only vaguely and darkly seen Thady Shea observed clearly and with wonder; yet, just as she missed the more mystical side of it, he missed the more practical side. More diverse creatures wearing human semblance could scarce have been found than these twain, here met upon a desert upland of New Mexico—the woman, a self-reliant mountaineer and prospector who knew only her own little world, the man a drunkard, a broken-down “hamfatter,” who knew all the outside world which had rejected him. They had come together from different spheres.

As he sat there staring, he mentally and for the last time reviewed the life that lay behind him; before him uprose all the contemptuous years, the sad wreckage of high hopes and tinsel glories, the hard and wretched fact of liquor. He would shut it out of his mind forever, after to-day, he thought. He would live in the present only, from day to day. He would try a new life—and let the dead bury their dead!

He turned to Mrs. Crump, his sad and earnest eyes looking oddly cynical.

“I do not think it humanly possible that I can resist liquor,” he said, gravely. “I am frank with you. It were easy to swear that I would pluck out drowned honour by the roots—but, madam, I think that this morning I am weary of swearing. I have tried to abstain, and I cannot. Always it is the first week or two of torture that downs me——

“You’re showin’ sense, now,” said the lady. “Want to try it or not?”

He rose in the car and attempted a bow in his showy and pitiful manner. In this bow, however, was an element of grace, the more pronounced by its sharp contrast to his gaunt, sombre aspect.

“Madam, I am deeply sensible of the compliment you pay me. Yet, in picking from the gutter a drunken failure, are you wise? I am entirely ignorant of prospecting and——”

“Don’t worry none. Ye’ll learn that quick enough.”

Again Thaddeus bowed. “But, madam, I understand that prospectors go off into the desert places and live. In justice to yourself, do you not think that your enemies might seize viciously upon the least excuse for misinterpretation of character——”

For the first time Shea saw Mehitabel Crump gripped in anger. He paused, aghast.

Her gigantic form quivered with rage then stiffened into towering wrath. Her tanned, age-touched features suddenly hardened into sentient bronze from which her blue eyes blazed forth terribly, jewelled indices of an indomitable and quick-flaming spirit within.

“Thady Shea, it’s well for you them words come from an honest heart,” said she, with a slow and grim emphasis. “They ain’t no one goin’ to say a word agin’ me, except them for what I don’t give a tinker’s dam; and if one o’ them dasts to say it in my hearin’, chain lightnin’ is goin’ to strike quick and sudden! This here territory—state, I mean—knows Mehitabel Crump and has knowed her for some years back. Paste that in your hat, Thady Shea!”

As some dread lioness hears in dreams the horns and shouts of hunters, and starting erect with bristling front mutters her low and terrible growl of challenge, so Mehitabel Crump defiantly faced Thaddeus.

He, poor soul, inwardly cursed his too-nimble tongue, and shrank visibly from the spectacle of wrath. Before the hurt and amazed eyes of him Mrs. Crump suddenly abandoned her righteous attitude. Having palpably overawed him, she now felt ashamed of herself.

“There, buck up,” she brusquely ordered.

“Tell me, now! If I answer for it that ye stay sober a couple o’ weeks or so, will ye make the fight?”

“Yes.” Hope fought against despair in Shea’s voice; he knew his own weakness well.

“All right. Let’s go, then!”

“We’re going to Santa Fé?”

Mrs. Crump advanced to the front of the flivver, and seized the crank. Then she paused, her blue eyes striking up over the radiator at Shea.

“No, I ain’t goin’ to Santy Fé; neither are you! We’re goin’ to the most man-forsaken spot they is in all the world, I reckon. We got grub, and everything else can wait a couple o’ weeks or so. Accordin’ to the Good Book, Providence was mighty rushed about creation, but I ain’t in no special hurry about makin’ a man of you——”

Her words were drowned in the engine’s roar. Thaddeus Roscius Shea made himself as small as possible; Mrs. Crump crowded in under the wheel, the car swaying to her weight, and they leaped forward.

In silence she drove, pushing the flivver with a speed and abandon which left Shea clinging desperately to his seat. Twenty minutes later an intersecting road made its appearance; Mrs. Crump left the highway and followed this road due north for a couple of miles. There, coming to an east-and-west road which was decidedly rough, she headed west.

“This here’s the trail to Cochiti pueblo,” she announced, enigmatically.

Four miles of this, and she struck an even worse road that headed northwest. Shea’s eyes opened as they progressed. Never in all his life had he encountered such grotesque country as this which now lay on every hand as though evoked by magic—utter desolation of huge rock masses, blistered and calcined by ancient fires, eroded into strange spires and pinnacles of weird formation. To the north towered Dome Rock with its adjacent crater. No sign of life was anywhere in evidence.

Shea was helplessly gripped by the personality of the woman beside him. Mentally he was overborne and awed; physically he was sick—not ill, but downright sick, possibly due to the sparse gulps of liquor which he had downed, possibly to the glaring sun. He cared not whether he lived or died. He felt that this day had brought him to the end of his rope, and that nothing more could matter.

“Getting into the lava beds,” observed Mrs. Crump, cheerfully. Shea understood her words only dimly. “This here Henry sure does go pokin’ where you’d think nothin’ short of a mule could live! The trail peters out a bit farther, then we got to hoof it over to the Rio Grande and make camp.”

Poor Shea shivered. The frightful desolation of the scene horrified him. He had never been an outdoor man. His had ever been the weakness, the dependency of the sheltered and civilized being. Contact with this strangely primitive woman frightened him. He felt like babbling in his terror, begging to be taken back and allowed to resume his place among the swine. Here was something new, awful, incredible! But he held his peace.

Had he been able to look a few miles ahead; had he foreseen what lay before him in that camp in White Rock Cañon, a place which in grandeur and inaccessibility rivalled the great cañon of the Colorado; had he known that he was about to tread a trail which few white men had ever followed—in short, had he understood what Mehitabel Crump’s plan held in store for him, he would at that moment have yielded up the ghost, cheerfully!

At last, reaching a sheer incline where boulders larger than the car itself filled all the trail and rendered further progress impossible, Mrs. Crump killed her engine and set her brakes hard.

“I guess Henry can lay here all his life and never be stole,” she said, with a sigh of relaxation. “Well, Thady, here we are! D’you know what? It ain’t lack of ambition that makes folks mis’able and unsatisfied; it’s lack o’ purpose. Now, I aim to teach ye some purpose, Thady. Look at me! I been prospectin’ all my life, and still goin’ strong, just because I got a definite object ahead—to strike it rich somewheres!

“Well, climb down. We got to rig up some grub into packs, hoof it to the nearest canoncito, and reach the Rio Grande. It’s less’n two mile in a straight line to water, but twenty ’fore we gets there, if we gets there a-tall. Come on, limber up!”

Thaddeus Roscius Shea groaned inaudibly—but limbered up.

CHAPTER III—CORAVEL TIO ENJOYS A BUSY MORNING

Coravel Tio sold curios in the old town of Santa Fé. He also sold antiques, real and fraudulent; he had a wholesale business in Indian wares that extended over the whole land.

Coravel Tio was one of the few Americans who could trace their ancestry in an unbroken line for three hundred years. It was almost exactly three hundred years since the ancestor of Coravel Tio had come to Santa Fé as a conquistador. Coravel Tio was wont to boast of this, an easily proven fact; and, boasting, he had sold the conquistador’s battered old armour at least fifty times.

When the boasts of Coravel Tio were questioned, he would admit with a chuckle that he was a philosopher; and do not all philosophers live by lying, señor? There was great truth in him when he was not selling his ancestor’s armour to tourists—and even then, if he happened to like the looks of the tourist, he would gently insinuate that as a business man he sold fraudulent wares and lied nobly about them, but that in private he was a philosopher. And the tourists, liking this quaintly naïve speech, bought the more.

It was a big, dark, quiet shop, full of Indian goods and weapons, antique furniture that would have made Chippendale’s eyes water, ivories, old paintings, manuscripts from ancient missions. A good half of Coravel Tio’s shop was not for sale at any price. Neither, said men, was Coravel Tio.

He was a soft-spoken little man, quiet, of strange smiles and strange silences. His was the art of making silence into a reproof, an assent, a curse. The world of Santa Fé moved about Uncle Coravel and heeded him not, shouldered him aside; and Coravel Tio, knowing his fathers to have been conquistadores, smiled gently at the world. His name was usually dismissed with a shrug—in effect, a huge tribute to him. Talleyrand would have given his soul to have been accorded such treatment from the diplomats of Europe; it would have rendered him invincible.

One of those rare men was Coravel Tio whose faculties, masked by childish gentleness, grow more terribly keen with every passing year. His brain was like a seething volcano—a volcano which seems to be extinct and cold and impotent, yet which holds unguessed fires somewhere deep within itself.

Upon a day, some time following the meeting of Mehitabel Crump with Thady Shea, this Coravel Tio was standing in talk with one Cota, a native member of the legislature then in session.

“But, señor!” was volubly protesting the legislator, with excitement. “They say the majority is assured, that the bill already drawn, that the capital is to be moved to Albuquerque at this very session!”

“I know,” said Coravel, passively, his dark eyes gently mournful.

“You know? But what—what is to be done? Shall those down-state people take away our capital? We must prevent it! We must do something! It’s this man Mackintavers who is at the bottom of it, I suppose——”

Coravel Tio fingered a blanket which topped a pile beside him—a gaudy red blanket. He regarded it with curious eyes.

“I fear this is not genuine—it does not have the old Spanish uniform red,” he murmured, as though inwardly he were thinking only of his wares. Then suddenly his eyes lifted to the other man, and he smiled. In his smile was a piercing hint of mockery like a half-sheathed sword; before that smile Cota stammered and fell silent.

“Oh, señor, this matter of the capital!” answered Coravel Tio, softly. “Why, for many, many years men have said that the capital is to be moved to Albuquerque; yet it has not been moved! Nor will it be moved. And, Señor Cota, let me whisper something to you! I hear that you have bought a new automobile. That is very nice, very nice! But, señor, if by any chance you are misled into voting for that bill, it would be a very sad event in your life; a most unhappy event, I assure you! Señor, customers await me. Adios.”

As the legislator left the shop, he furtively crossed himself, wonder and fear struggling in his pallid features.

The merchant now turned to his waiting customers. Of these, one was a Pueblo, a Cochiti man as the fashion of his high white moccasins and barbaric apparel testified to a knowing eye. The others were two white men who together approached the curio dealer. Coravel Tio stepped to a show case filled with onyx and other old carvings, and across this faced the two men with an uplift of his brows, a silent questioning.

“You’re Mr. Coravel—Coravel Tio?” queried one of the two. The dealer merely smiled and nodded, in his birdlike fashion. “Can we see you in private?”

“I have no privacy,” said Coravel Tio. “This is my shop. You may speak freely.”

“Huh!” grunted the other, surveying him in obvious hesitation. “Well, I dunno. Me and my partner here have been workin’ down to Magdalena, and we had a scrap with some fellers and laid ’em out. Right after that, a native by the name of Baca tipped us off that they was Mackintavers’ men, and we’d better light out in a hurry. He give us a loan and said to tell you about it, so we lit out here.”

Coravel Tio seemed greatly puzzled by this tale.

“My dear sir,” he returned, slowly, “I am a curio dealer. I do not know why you were sent to me. Do you?”

“Hell, no!” The miner stared at him disgustedly. “Must ha’ been some mistake.”

“Undoubtedly. I am most sorry. However, if you are looking for work, I might be able to help you—it seems to me that someone wrote me for a couple of men. Excuse me one moment while I look up the letter. What are your names, my friends?”

“Me? I’m Joe Gilbert. My partner here is Alf Lewis.”

Coravel Tio left them, and crossed to a glassed-in box of an office. He opened a locked safe, swiftly inspected a telegraph form, and nodded to himself in a satisfied manner. He returned to the two men, tapped for a moment upon the glass counter, meditatively, then addressed them.

“Señors, I regret the mistake exceedingly. Still, if you want work, I suggest that you drive over to Domingo this afternoon with my cousin, who lives there. You may stay a day or two with him, then this friend of mine will pick you up and take you to work.”

The second man, Lewis, spoke up hesitantly.

“Minin’ is our work, mister. We ain’t no ranchers.”

“Certainly.” Coravel Tio smiled, gazing at him. “You will not work for a native, my friends. Ah, no! Be here at two this afternoon, please.”

The two men left the shop. Outside, in the Street, they paused and looked at each other. The second man, Lewis, swore under his breath.

“Joe, how in hell did he know we was worried over workin’ for a greaser boss?”

Gilbert merely shrugged his shoulders and strode away.

Within the shop, Coravel Tio turned to the waiting Indian and spoke—this time neither in Spanish nor English, but in the Indian tongue itself. As he spoke, however, he saw the stolid redskin make a slight gesture. Catlike, Coravel Tio turned about and went to meet a man who had just entered the shop; catlike, too, he purred suave greeting.

A large man, this new arrival—square of head and jaw and shoulder, with small gray eyes closely set, a moustache bristling over a square mouth, ruthless hardness stamped in every line of figure, face, and manner. He was dressed carelessly but well.

“Morning,” he said, curtly. His eyes bit sharply about the place, then rested with intent scrutiny upon the proprietor. “Morning, Coravel Tio. I been looking for someone who can talk Injun. I’ve got a proposition that won’t handle well in Spanish; it’s got to be put to ’em in their own tongue. I hear that you can find me someone.”

Regretfully, Coravel Tio shook his head.

“No—o,” he said, in reflective accents. “I am sorry, Mr. Mackintavers. My clerk, Juan Estrada, spoke their language, but he joined the army and is still in service. Myself, I know of it only a word or two. But wait! Here is a Cochiti man who sells me turquoise; he might serve you as interpreter, if he is willing.”

He called the loitering Indian, and in the bastard Spanish patois of the country put the query. Mackintavers, who also spoke the tongue well, intervened and tried to employ the Indian as interpreter. To both interrogators the Pueblo shook his head in stolid negation. He would not serve in the desired capacity, and knew of no one else who would.

“It is a great pity he is so stubborn!” Coravel Tio gestured in despair as he turned to his visitor. “I owe you thanks, Mr. Mackintavers, for getting my wholesale department that order from the St. Louis dealer. I am in your debt, and I shall be grateful if I can repay the obligation. In this case, alas, I am powerless!”

“Well, let it go.” Mackintavers waved a large, square hand. He produced cigars, set one between his square white teeth, and handed the other to Coravel Tio. “You can repay me here and now. A man at Albuquerque sent a telegram to that Crump woman in your care. Where is she?”

“What is all this?” Coravel Tio was obviously astonished. “Señor, I am a curio dealer, no more! You surely do not refer to the kind-hearted Mrs. Crump?”

Mackintavers eyed him, chewing on his cigar. Then he nodded grimly.

“I do! Is she a particular friend of yours?”

“Certainly! Have I not known her these twenty years? I buy much from her—bits of turquoise, queer Indian things, odd relics. Her mail often comes here, remaining until she calls for it. I am a curio dealer, señor, and in other matters I take no interest.”

“Hm!” grunted Mackintavers. “Has she been here lately?”

“No, señor, not for three months—no, more than that! Mail comes, also telegrams.”

“D’you know where she is?” demanded the other, savagely.

Dreamily reflective, Coravel Tio fastened his eyes upon the right ear of Mackintavers. That ear bore a half-healed scar, like a bullet-nick. Beneath that silent scrutiny the other man reddened uneasily.

“Let me see! My wife’s second cousin, Estevan Baca, wrote me last week that he had met her in Las Vegas. Everyone knows her, señor. If I can send any message for you——”

“No. Much obliged, all the same,” grunted the other. “I’ll probably be at the Aztec House for a few days. Let me know in case she comes to town, will you? I want to see her.”

With exactly the proper degree of bland eagerness, Coravel Tio assented to this, and Mackintavers departed heavily. The merchant accompanied him to the door and watched him stride up the narrow street, cursing the burros laden with mountain wood that blocked his way. Then, smiling a trifle oddly, the descendant of conquistadores returned to the waiting man from Cochiti pueblo.

“Do you know why that man wanted an interpreter?” he asked the Indian, in the latter’s native tongue. The redskin grinned wisely and shook the black hair from his eyes.

“Yes. But it is not a matter to discuss with Christians, my father.”

Coravel Tio nodded carelessly. The question was closed. The Pueblo folk are, of course, very devoted converts to the Christian faith; yet those who know them intimately can testify that they sometimes have affairs, perhaps touching upon the queer stone idols of their fathers, which do not bear discussion with other Christians. They do not pray to the old gods—perhaps—but they hold them in tremendous respect.

“You came to tell me something,” prompted the curio dealer, gently.

The Indian assented with a nod. He leaned against one of the wooden pillars that supported the roof, and began to roll a cigarette while he talked.

“Yesterday, my father, I was near the painted caves of the Colorado, and I stood above White Rock Cañon looking down at the river. There on the other side of the water I saw the strangest thing in the world. I went home and told the governor of the pueblo what I had seen, and it was his command that I come here and tell you also, for this is some queer affair of the white people.”

Coravel Tio said nothing at all. The Pueblo lighted his cigarette and continued:

“Upon the east side of the river and cañon, not so well hidden that I could not see it, was a camp, and in that camp were a white man and a white woman. I have never before seen white folk able to reach that place, unless it were the Trail Runner who takes pictures of us and sells them to tourists. These were strangers to me. One was a very large woman. The man was tall, but he acted very strangely. He acted as though God had touched his brain. So did they both.”

“In what way?” asked Coravel Tio, sharply.

“In every way, my father. The man wore no shoes, and the hot rocks hurt his feet so that he limped. I saw him spring on the woman, and they fought. She beat him off and pointed a gun at him. Then he seemed to be weeping like a woman, and he grovelled before her. She threw something far off on the stones, and I think it was glass that broke—a bottle, perhaps.”

“Oh!” said Coravel Tio. “Oh! Perhaps it was.”

“There were other strange actions,” pursued the stolid red man. “I could not understand them——”

“No matter.” Coravel Tio made a gesture as though dismissing the subject. “Could you get to that camp from your pueblo?”

“Of course, by crossing the river, by swimming the water there. But that may be a hard thing to do, my father.”

“Undoubtedly, but you will do it, and I will pay you well. There is a package to give that woman. Wait.”

Coravel Tio went to his little box of an office, seated himself at the desk, and began to write in a fair, round hand. The epistle required neither superscription nor signature:

The burlap sack proved to contain some interesting contents. The two small sacks in the centre were even more interesting. The samples have been assayed with the following results:

Numbers one to five, quartzitic with bare traces of brittle silver ore; no good. Numbers six to fifteen, barytes, perhaps five dollars a ton; no good. Number sixteen is strontianite. This is converted into certain nitrates used in manufacture of fireworks and in beet sugar refining. Tremendously valuable and rare. This, señora, is enough.

I think that M. has scented those assays. He is asking for you, but I have made him look toward Las Vegas. To-morrow you will find two men at Domingo who wish work—they will be there until you arrive: Joe Gilbert and Alf Lewis. Meet me there also, please. I will take one-third interest in Number Sixteen as you suggest, and will furnish whatever money you desire on account. I enclose an advance sum.

I shall have articles of partnership ready. Suppose you meet me day after to-morrow, at Domingo. You must give me location, etc., in order to arrange details of filing, land and mineral right lease, etc. Be careful about the new explosives law, unless you already have a permit.

“Being a woman,” reflected Coravel Tio, “she should know that the most important thing in this letter is the very end of it.”

He sealed the letter, placed it upon a thick sheaf of bank notes, wrapped the parcel in oiled silk and again in a small waterproof Navaho saddle blanket. This package he gave to the waiting redskin.

“It must go into the hands of that large woman, and no other,” he said, gravely. “If you fail, there is trouble for all of us—and perhaps for the gods of the San Marcos also!”

At these last words a flash of keen surprise sprang athwart the Indian’s face; then he took the package and turned to the doorway without response. Coravel Tio looked after him, and smiled gently.

CHAPTER IV—MRS. CRUMP HEADS SOUTHWEST

There was in Domingo a man named Baca. Domingo is a tiny village of adobes nestling along the curve of Santa Fé creek under the gray sharpness of Bajada hill; there is also an Indian pueblo of the same name.

In every ancient native settlement there is at least one man named Baca, which signifies “cow” and may be spelled, in the old fashion, either Baca or Vaca. If these folk came all of one stock, they have increased and multiplied exceedingly.

Under the big cottonwood tree that grew in front of the Baca home sat smoking Joe Gilbert and his partner Lewis. Up to them, and halting abruptly before the house, crept a dust-white flivver in which sat two people: one a woman, great of girth and frame, the other a man, gaunt and haggard, whose black eyes blazed like twin stars of desolation.

The woman alighted and faced the two smokers. They rose and doffed their hats.

“Gents, know where I can find Alf Lewis and Joe Gilbert?” she inquired, bluntly.

“That’s us, ma’am.”

“Thought so. My name’s Mehitabel Crump, with Mrs. for a handle. I’m goin’ to open up an ore outcrop. This here is Thady Shea, my partner. Want work, or not?”

“I’ve heard of you, ma’am,” said Gilbert.

“So’ve I!” exclaimed Lewis. “You bet we want work! Only, ma’am, we’d ought to tell ye square that they’s apt to be warrants out for us.”

“Warrants never made me lose sleep,” said Mrs. Crump, eying them with a nod of satisfaction. “Howsomever, I’ll return the favour by saying that if ye take up with me it ain’t goin’ to be no pleasure trip, gents. ’Cause why, I’ve got something good, something that’ll bring Mackintavers on the trail soon’s he smells it—him or his friends. I don’t aim to be bluffed out, I don’t aim to be bought out, and I don’t aim to be lawed out; I got something big, and I aim to hang on to it spite of hell and high water until I sell out big. Them’s my openers.”

“They’re plenty, ma’am,” said Gilbert. “We sure would admire to work for you!”

A brief discussion followed as to wages. Thaddeus Roscius Shea sat jack-knifed in the car’s front seat, saying not a word. His face was sun-blistered and graven with gnawing desire, his black eyes were feverish, he looked anything but a mining man. Yet the two miners, who must have felt more than a slight curiosity touching him, evinced none. At length Mrs. Crump turned to the car.

“Well, pile in here! Make room in the back, but handle them boxes gentle. Three or four holds blasting powder and dynamite. I had quite a stock left over, and brung it along.”

“Do we travel far?” asked Lewis, nervously.

“You bet we do! But don’t worry none. I ain’t much farther from them boxes than you boys are, and I’m pickin’ the soft spots in the road. Besides, I’ve driv’ several hundred mile a’ready with this here outfit, and she ain’t gone up on me yet. Barring bad luck, we’d ought to get where we’re goin’ by the night of day after to-morrow.”

“I’ve heard tell that you had cold iron for nerves,” commented Gilbert. “But you ain’t backing me down, none whatever, ma’am!”

He sprang in, began to shift the load, and Lewis promptly joined him. Mrs. Crump turned and strode away through the dust. Thady Shea watched her out of sight, then twisted about, and for the first time broke the silence that had enveloped him.

“Gentlemen! May I inquire whether either of you delvers in the deeps of earth are possessed of spirits?”

At the sonorously booming voice Gilbert’s jaw dropped in amazement.

“Good gosh! Is that Scripture talk? What d’ye mean—spirits?”

Shea made an impatient gesture. “The fiery fluids that do mingle soul with vaster inspiration! I pray you, give me to drink as you do value drink!”

“Oh, he means a drink!” ejaculated Lewis, staring. “We ain’t got a drop, Shea.”

The lanky figure jack-knifed together again in disconsolate despair. The two men in the rear of the car glanced at each other. Gilbert tapped his head; Lewis grimaced.

Meantime, Mrs. Crump had passed along the winding row of adobes and finally turned into a corral of high boards. There, concealed from exterior view, she found an automobile at rest; she went on to the adjoining rear door of the adobe house. The door was opened to her by Coravel Tio, who greeted her with a quick smile and a bow.

“My land, it’s hot!” said Mrs. Crump. “Howdy!”

“This place is hot indeed,” responded the merchant. “Let us take the front room and we may talk in private. I have the papers all made out.”

They understood each other very well, these two. Presently, however, Coravel Tio discovered that a third interest in Number Sixteen was to be assigned to Thaddeus Shea, in whose name, also, the entire mining property was to stand. He leaned back and surveyed Mrs. Crump with interest.

“I do not know this man Shea, señora. Why do you make him wealthy?”

There was no hint of offence in his tone. He spoke as one having the right to ask, and Mrs. Crump promptly acquiesced.

“He’s an old stage actor, Coravel. I picks him up on the road and takes him along. I’m breakin’ him of drink, and I got a hunch that he’s goin’ to turn out a real man. As for makin’ him wealthy, none of us ain’t going to thrive on Number Sixteen for quite a spell yet! I’m gambling that Thady Shea will earn all he gets. He’s absolutely honest, and good-hearted. He won’t know the mine’s in his name, and won’t care; bein’ that way, it’ll throw Mackintavers off the track. Besides, I feel downright sorry for Thady; he’s had a heap o’ misery in his life, looks to me.”

The other smiled gently and waved his hand.

“Señora, you are the one woman whose great heart has no equal! It is in my mind that this man will be the cause of misfortune; but what matter? If not from one cause, then from another. Misfortunes are sent by the gods to make us great!

“I shall attend to everything in his name; a good idea, since he will be unknown to Mackintavers or Dorales. You will uncover the vein, and send me more samples immediately. These other two men must become small shareholders, so that adjacent claims and mining rights may be secured for the company. Once we are secure, we may talk of eastern capital.”

“Once we’re secure,” said Mrs. Crump grimly, “look out for Mackintavers, then and before; likewise, after!”

“Exactly.” Coravel Tio bowed and finished his writing.

A little later Mrs. Crump shook hands with him and departed. Coravel Tio watched her off, and heard the roar of her car’s engine. The roar became a thrum that lessened and died into the distance like a droning fly. Only then, it seemed, a sudden thought shook the man.

“Dios—I forgot!” he ejaculated. “I forgot to ask her about the permit for the explosives! Well, I warned her in the note. What matter? These incidents of destiny are intended to work out their own effects, and good somehow comes from everything. I am a philosopher!”

Blissfully unconscious whether philosophy might be of aid in running a flivver, Mrs. Crump headed southward over the river road to Albuquerque.

A rough road is that, and well travelled. Mrs. Crump was in some haste to get over this section unobserved, and it was entirely evident that her haste was greater than her caution regarding the jiggling boxes in the rear of the car.

More than once the two men in the tonneau stared quickly at each other’s white faces; more than once the boxes and bundles crashed and banged fearsomely, in view of their partial contents; but Mrs. Crump only threw in more gas and plunged ahead. As for Thaddeus Roscius Shea, he stared out upon the passing scenery with glazed and lack-lustre eyes, and held his peace.

When at last they arrived in the outskirts of Albuquerque, Mrs. Crump paused at a wayside station to fill up with oil and gasoline, also to refill several emptied water bags which formed part of the equipment.

“We ain’t goin’ into town,” she vouchsafed, curtly, to her charges. “And when we gets reaching out over the mesa, you two boys act tender with them boxes! They’s two-three places we got to ford cattle runs, and we got to do it sudden to keep out of the quicksands. But don’t worry no more, there ain’t no special danger.”

The advice was entirely superfluous. Gilbert and Lewis could by no means have worried more. They had reached the limit.

Barely skimming the outlying streets of Albuquerque, Mrs. Crump avoided the better-known highway beside the railroad and took the shorter but deserted road that leads south over the mesa to Becker. Most of this was covered before darkness descended upon them.

Then a brief and barren camp was made; it was also a fireless camp, and the “grub” was cold. Stiff and weary though the three passengers were, it was clearly impossible that they should prove less tough than a mere woman. So, when after an hour’s halt Mrs. Crump grimly cranked up, they piled into the car without protest.

On they went through the darkness. It was well after midnight when the iron nature of Mehitabel Crump acknowledged signs of approaching dissolution in the hand that rocked the steering wheel. Admitting her weakness with a sigh, she turned out of the interminable road and halted. Blanket rolls were unlashed, and sleep descended swiftly upon three members of that quartet.

It must be told that this camp was a milepost in the life of Thaddeus Roscius Shea. He could not sleep. A hundred yards away from the camp he strode up and down under the cold stars, his gaunt body shivering with the chill of the night, his haggard features contorted with the desperate anguish of shattered nerves. All the old impertinences of his soul were risen strong within him; he wanted to run away and end this intolerable situation. He wanted to run away, here and now!

Yet, when at length he clumsily wrapped himself in his blanket and fell asleep, tears beaded his hollow cheeks and reflected the pale starlight above; and like the stars, those tears were cleansing, and serenely sad. The first tears he had shed in years—the tears of a man, wrung from deep within him; tears of brief conquest over himself. He would stick!

Sunrise found the dust-white flivver once more far afield.

The remaining details of that odyssey have no place here. The dust-white flivver came safely to its destination, and work duly began upon Number Sixteen. Days of hard, back-breaking labour ensued—days in which living quarters had to be erected before the claim could be touched. In those days Thaddeus Roscius Shea became, for good and all, Thady Shea.

Number Sixteen lay among the most desolate of desolate hills, just over the ridge of a long hogback. In the cañon below there was a trickle of water from the mountains; beside this rito were erected two rough shacks, and here the dust-white flivver rested peacefully. To the north towered the higher forested ranges whence came the cañon—the continental divide, rugged crests leaping at the sky. Below, a few miles distant, stretched the bad lands and the lava beds; a scoriated, blasphemous strip such as is often found in the southwest. Behind this lay scattered ranches and the road into Zacaton City.

Up on that hogback, leaning upon his pick, stood Thady Shea. Gone was the threadbare black raiment, gone and replaced by overalls, high boots, flannel shirt. Shea was less conscious of his changed exterior than were those about him. Lewis and Gilbert, preparing a blasting charge a hundred feet distant, glanced at the great, gaunt figure.

“Bloomed out most amazing, ain’t he?” said Lewis. “No tinhorn, neither. Dead game.”

Gilbert, cutting the fuse with deft fingers, wagged his head. “Sure looks that-a-way, partner. Reckon Mis’ Crump knew her business, after all, when she tied up with him. Gosh! Ain’t she one a-gile critter, though?”

Shea stood rocklike, watching the blast. Even in this short space of time the swing of axe and pick had hardened him amazingly; his towering figure seemed to move with a more lissome flow of muscles; for the first time in his life, most wonderful of all, his deeply lined features had become centred about one fixed and determined purpose—to keep himself clean of liquor. He had conquered, and with the victory had come a new serenity.