Part 14

"Well, you got it coming to you!" answered Hooker heartlessly.

"But I will pay you well!" pleaded Aragon. "I will pay you--" He paused as if to consider what would tempt him and then suddenly he raised his head.

"What is it you wish above everything?" he questioned eagerly. "Your title to the mine--no? _Bien!_ Take me to the line--protect me from my enemies--and the papers are yours!"

"Have you got them with you?" inquired Hooker with businesslike directness.

"No, but I can get them!" cried Aragon, forgetful of everything but his desire to escape. "I can get them while you saddle my horse!"

"Where?" demanded Hooker craftily.

"From the _agente mineral_!" answered Aragon. "I have a great deal of influence with him, and--"

"_Bastante!_" exploded Bud in a voice which made Aragon jump. "Enough! If you can get them, _I_ can! And we shall see, Señor Aragon, whether this pistol of mine will not give me some influence, too!"

"Then you will take them?" faltered Aragon as Hooker started to go. "You will take them and leave me for Bernardo Bravo to--"

"Listen, _señor_!" exclaimed Hooker, halting and advancing a threatening forefinger. "A man who can hire four men to do his dirty work needs no protection from me. You understand that--no? Then listen again. I am going to get those papers. If I hear a word from you I will send you to join your four men."

He touched his gun as he spoke and strode out into the open, where he beckoned the mineral agent from the crowd. A word in his ear and they went down the hill together, while Don Cipriano watched from above. Then, as they turned into the office, Aragon spat out a curse and went to seek Manuel del Rey.

XXIV

In a land of class privilege and official graft it is often only in times of anarchy that a poor man can get his rights. For eight months Hooker had battled against the petty intrigue of Aragon and the _agente mineral_, and then suddenly, when the times turned to war and fear gripped at their hearts, he rose up and claimed his own, holding out his brawny right hand and demanding the concession to his mine.

In a day the whirligig of fortune had turned, and it was the fighting man who dominated. He spoke quietly and made no threats, but the look in his eye was enough, and the _agente_ gave him his papers.

With his concession inside his shirt and a belt of gold around his waist Bud stepped forth like a king, for there was nothing left in Mexico for him. Once on his horse and headed for the line and he could laugh at them all. In Gadsden he could show title to Kruger, he could give answer for his trust and look the world in the eye.

Yes, he was a man now--but his work was not quite done. Up at the big house, with the screeching women around her, was Gracia Aragon, and he owed her something for his rough words. To pay her for that he would stay. Whatever she asked now he would grant it; and if worst came to worst he would take her with him and make good his promise to Phil. He had given his word and that was enough. Now he had only to wait.

The boy lieutenant, the brothers Mendoza, the superintendent, and Manuel del Rey, all were out on the hillside talking terms with Bernardo Bravo and his chiefs. With the rebels it was largely a bluff, since field-glasses had shown them to be short of cartridges; but they had over a thousand men massed along the ridges and, with courage, could easily take the town.

As for the Mendozas and their Sonoran miners, they were properly chagrined at their waste of ammunition and swore by Santa Guadalupe to fight it out with hand-grenades. Even as their leaders wrangled the Mexican powder-men were busily manufacturing bombs, and all the while the superintendent was glancing to the south, for swift couriers had been sent to Alvarez, the doughty Spanish _haciendado_ of the hot country, to beg him to come to their relief.

Twice before Alvarez had met the rebels. The first time he spoke them well and they ran off all his horses. The second time he armed his Yaquis and Yaqui Mayo _rancheros_ against them and drove them from his domain, inflicting a sanguinary punishment.

Since then he had been itching to engage them in a pitched battle, and when the word reached him he would come. Two hundred and forty Yaquis, all armed with repeating rifles, would follow at his back, and even with his boasted thousands Bernardo Bravo could hardly withstand their valor. So, while the rebels parleyed, demanding a ransom of millions and threatening to destroy the town, the defenders argued and reasoned with them, hoping to kill the time until Alvarez should arrive.

In the open space in front of the house the refugees gathered in an anxious group, waiting for messengers from the front, and as Hooker walked among them he was aware of the malignant glances of Aragon. There were other glances as well, for he had won great favor with the ladies by ditching the powder-train, but none from Gracia or her mother.

From the beginning the Señora Aragon had treated him as a stranger, according to the code of her class, and Hooker had never attempted to intrude. But if Gracia still remembered that she was an American girl at heart, she forgot to show it to him. To all she was now the proud Spanish lady, thrown with the common people by the stress of circumstances, but far away from them in her thoughts.

The conference between the leaders dragged on and messengers came and went with the news--then, after hours of debate, it broke up suddenly in a row and the emissaries came back on the run. Even at that they narrowly escaped, for the rebels opened fire upon them from the ridges, and before they could get back to cover the dandy, Manuel del Rey, received a bullet-hole through the crown of his hat.

A grim smile flickered across Bud's face as he saw the damage it had wrought, for he knew that Amigo was in the hills--and a bullet shot down-hill goes high! Some trace of what was in his mind must have come to Del Rey as he halted in the shelter of the house, for he regarded the American sternly as Aragon spoke rapidly in his ear. But if they planned vengeance between them the times were not right, for a rattle of arms came from the lower town and the captain was up and away to marshal his men to the defense.

So far in the siege Del Rey had kept under cover, patrolling the streets and plaza and letting the volunteers fight, but now the war had shifted to his territory and his _rurales_ were running like mad. For, matching treachery against deceit, the rebel leaders had sent men around to slip up near the town and at the first fusillade from the hillside they came charging up the creek.

Then it was that the ever-watchful _rurales_ proved their worth. As the rebels appeared in the open they ran to the outlying houses and, fighting from the flat roofs, checked the advance until the miners could come to their aid.

But in the confusion another party of rebels had rushed down the gulch from the west, and while the fight was going on in the lower town they found lodgment in a big adobe house. And now for the first time there was fighting in earnest--the house-to-house fighting that is seen at its worst in Mexico. While women screamed in the _casa grande_ and the Americans paced to and fro on the hill, the boom of a dynamite bomb marked the beginning of hand-to-hand.

With a fearlessness born of long familiarity with explosives the Sonoran miners advanced valiantly with their hand-grenades--baking-powder cans filled with dynamite and studded with fulminating caps. Digging fiercely through wall after wall they approached unperceived by the enemy and the first bomb flung from a roof filled the adobe with wounded and dead.

A dense pall of yellowish smoke rose high above the town and, as bomb after bomb was exploded and the yells of the miners grew louder with each success, the stunned invaders broke from cover and rushed helter-skelter up the gulch. Then there was a prodigious shouting from the Sonorans and more than one triumphant grenadier swung his can of giant powder by the sling and let it smash against the hill in a terrific detonation.

In the big house all was confusion. Soon the cheers of the defenders heralded victory and, in spite of all efforts to restrain them, the wives of the miners rushed into the open to gaze upon the triumph of their menfolk.

On the hilltops the ineffective rebel riflemen rose up from behind their stone wall to stare, until suddenly they, too, were seized with a panic and ran to and fro like ants. Then, around the curve below the concentrator, a tall man came dashing up on a pure white horse, and behind him, charging as he charged, came the swarthy Yaquis of Alvarez, their new rifles gleaming in the sun.

Up along the hillside and after the fugitives they ran with vengeful eagerness, racing one another for the higher ground and the first shot at the rebels. First Alvarez on his white horse would be ahead and then, as they encountered rocks, the Yaquis would surge to the front. It was a race and at the same time it was a rout, for, at the first glimpse of that oncoming body of warriors, the cowardly followers of Bernardo Bravo took to their heels and fled.

But over the rocks no Chihuahuan, no matter how scared, can hope to outdistance a Yaqui, and soon the _pop, pop_ of rifles told the fate of the first luckless stragglers. For the Yaquis, after a hundred and sixty years of guerrilla warfare, never waste a shot; and as savage yells and the crash of a sudden volley drifted down from the rocky heights the men who had been besieged in Fortuna knew that death was abroad in the hills.

Fainter and fainter came the shots as the pursuit led on to the north and, as Hooker strained his eyes to follow a huge form that intuition told him was Amigo, he was wakened suddenly from his preoccupation by the touch of some unseen hand. He was in the open with people all about him--Spanish refugees, Americans, triumphant miners and their wives--but that touch made him forget the battle above him and instantly think of Gracia.

He turned and hurried back to the corral where Copper Bottom was kept, and there he found her waiting, with her roan all saddled, and she challenged him with her eyes. The sun gleamed from a pistol that she held in her hand, and again from her golden hair, but he saw only her eyes, so brave and daring, and the challenge to mount and ride.

Only for a moment did he stand before her gaze, and then he caught up his saddle and spoke soothingly to his horse. They rode out of the corral together, closing the gates behind them and passing down a gulch to the rear. All the town lay silent below them as they turned toward the western pass.

Soldiers, miners, and refugees, men, women, and children, every soul in Fortuna was on the hill to see the last of the battle. It had been a crude affair, but bravely ended, and something in the dramatic suddenness of this victory had held all eyes to the close. Bud and Gracia passed out of town unnoticed, and as soon as they had rounded the point they spurred on till they gained the pass.

"I knew you would come!" said Gracia, smiling radiantly as they paused at the fork.

"Sure!" answered Hooker with his good-humored smile. "Count me in on anything--which way does this trail go; do you know?"

"It goes west twelve miles toward Arispe," replied Gracia confidently, "and then it comes into the main road that leads north to Nogales and Gadsden."

"What is there up here?" inquired Bud, pointing at a fainter trail that led off toward the north. "This country is new to me. Don't know, eh? Well, if we followed that trail we'd run into them rebels, anyway, so we might as well go to the west. Is your saddle all right? We'll hit it up then--I'd like to strike a road before dark."

They hurried on, following a well-marked trail that alternately climbed ridges and descended into arroyos, until finally it dropped down into a precipitous cañon where a swollen stream rushed and babbled and, while they still watched expectantly for the road, the evening quickly passed.

First the slanting rays of the sun struck fire from high yellow crags, then the fire faded and the sky glowed an opal-blue; then, through dark blues and purples the heavens turned to black above them and all the stars came out. Thousands of frogs made the cañon resound with their throaty songs and strange animals crashed through the brush at their approach, but still Hooker stayed in the saddle and Gracia followed on behind.

If she had thought in her dreams of an easier journey she made no comment now and, outside of stopping to cinch up her saddle, Bud seemed hardly to know she was there. The trail was not going to suit him--it edged off too far to the south--and yet, in the tropical darkness, he could not search out new ways to go.

At each fork he paused to light a match, and whichever way the mule-tracks went he went also, for pack-mules would take the main trail. For two hours and more they followed on down the stream and then Hooker stopped his horse.

"You might as well get down and rest a while," he said quietly. "This trail is no good--it's taking us south. We'll let our horses feed until the moon comes up and I'll try to work north by landmarks."

"Oh--are we lost?" gasped Gracia, dropping stiffly to the ground. "But of course we are," she added. "I've been thinking so for some time."

"Oh, that's all right," observed Hooker philosophically; "I don't mind being lost as long as I know where I'm at. We'll ride back until we get out of this dark cañon and then I'll lay a line due north."

They sat for a time in the darkness while their horses champed at the rich grass and then, unable to keep down her nerves, Gracia declared for a start. A vision of angry pursuers rose up in her mind--of Manuel del Rey and his keen-eyed _rurales_, hot upon their trail--and it would not let her rest.

Nor was the vision entirely the result of nervous imagination, for they had lost half the advantage of their start, as Hooker well knew, and if he made one more false move he would find himself called on to fight. As they rode back through the black cañon he asked himself for the hundredth time how it had all happened--why, at a single glance from her, he had gone against his better judgment and plunged himself into this tangle. And then, finally, what was he going to do about it?

Alone, he would have taken to the mountains with a fine disregard for trails, turning into whichever served his purpose best and following the lay of the land. Even with her in his care it would be best to do that yet, for there would be trailers on their track at sun-up, and it was either ride or fight.

Free at last from the pent-in cañon, they halted at the forks, while Bud looked out the land by moonlight. Dim and ghostly, the square-topped peaks and buttes rose all about him, huge and impassable except for the winding trails. He turned up a valley between two ridges, spurring his horse into a fast walk.

From one cow trail to another he picked out a way to the north, but the lay of the ground threw him to the east and there were no passes between the hills. The country was rocky, with long parallel ridges extending to the northeast, and when he saw where the way was taking him Bud called a halt till dawn.

By the very formation he was being gradually edged back toward Fortuna, and it would call for fresh horses and a rested Gracia to outstrip their pursuers by day. If the _rurales_ traveled by landmarks, heading for the northern passes in an effort to outride and intercept him, they might easily cut him off at the start; but if they trailed him--and he devoutly hoped they would--then they would have a tangled skein to follow and he could lose them in the broken country to the north.

So thinking, he cut grass among the rocks, spread down their saddle-blankets, and watched over the browsing horses while Gracia stretched out on the bed. After a day of excitement and a night of hard riding there is no call for a couch of down, and as the morning star appeared in the east she slept while Bud sat patiently by.

It was no new task to him, this watching and waiting for the dawn. For weeks at a time, after a hard day's work at the branding, he had stood guard half the night. Sleep was a luxury to him, like water to a mountain-sheep--and so were all the other useless things that town-bred people required.

People like Gracia, people like Phil--they were different in all their ways. To ride, to fight, to find the way--there he was a better man than Phil; but to speak to a woman, to know her ways, and to enter into her life--there he was no man at all.

He sighed now as he saw the first flush of dawn and turned to where she slept, calm and beautiful, in the solemn light. How to waken her, even that was a question, but the time had come to start.

Already, from Fortuna, Del Rey and his man-killing _rurales_ would be on the trail. He would come like the wind, that dashing little captain, and nothing but a bullet would stop him, for his honor was at stake. Nay, he had told Bud in so many words:

"She is mine, and no man shall come between us!"

It would be hard now if the _rurales_ should prove too many for him--if a bullet should check him in their flight and she be left alone. But how to wake her! He tramped near as he led up the unwilling mounts; then, as time pressed, he spoke to her, and at last he knelt at her side.

"Say!" he called, and when that did not serve he laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Wake up!" he said, shaking her gently. "Wake up, it's almost day!"

Even as he spoke he went back to the phrase of the cow-camp--where men rise before it is light. But Gracia woke up wondering and stared about her strangely, unable to understand.

"Why--what is it?" she cried. Then, as he spoke again and backed away, she remembered him with a smile.

"Oh," she said, "is it time to get up? Where are we, anyway?"

"About ten miles from Fortuna," answered Hooker soberly. "Too close--we ought to be over that divide."

He pointed ahead to where the valley narrowed and passed between two hills, and Gracia sat up, binding back her hair that had fallen from its place.

"Yes, yes!" she said resolutely. "We must go on--but why do you look at me so strangely?"

"Don't know," mumbled Bud. "Didn't know I was. Say, let me get them saddle-blankets, will you?"

He went about his work with embarrassed swiftness, slapping on saddles and bridles, coiling up ropes, and offering her his hand to mount. When he looked at her again it was not strangely.

"Hope you can ride," he said. "We got to get over that pass before anybody else makes it--after that we can take a rest."

"As fast as you please," she answered steadily. "Don't think about me. But what will happen if--they get there first?"

She was looking at him now as he searched out the trail ahead, but he pretended not to hear. One man in that pass was as good as a hundred, and there were only two things he could do--shoot his way through, or turn back. He believed she would not want to turn back.

XXV

Though the times had turned to war, all nature that morning was at peace, and they rode through a valley of flowers like knight and lady in a pageant. The rich grass rose knee-deep along the hillsides, the desert trees were filigreed with the tenderest green and twined with morning-glories, and in open glades the poppies and sand-verbenas spread forth masses of blue and gold.

Already on the mesquit-trees the mocking-birds were singing, and bright flashes of tropical color showed where cardinal and yellow-throat passed. The dew was still untouched upon the grass, and yet they hurried on, for some premonition whispered to them of evil, and they thought only to gain the far pass.

To the west and north rose the high and impassable mountain which had barred their way in the night; across the valley the flat-topped Fortunas threw their bulwark against the dawn; and all behind was broken hills and gulches, any one of which might give up armed men. Far ahead, like a knife-gash between the ridges, lay the pass to the northern plains, and as their trail swung out into the open they put spurs to their horses and galloped.

Once through that gap, the upper country would lie before them and they could pick and choose. Now they must depend upon speed and the chance that their way was not blocked.

Somewhere in those hills to the east Bernardo Bravo and his men were hidden. Or perhaps they were scattered, turned by their one defeat into roving bandits or vengeful partizans, laying waste the Sonoran ranches as they fought their way back to Chihuahua. There were a hundred evil chances that might befall the fugitives, and while Bud scanned the country ahead Gracia cast anxious glances behind.

"They are coming!" she cried at last, as a moving spot appeared in the rear. "Oh, there they are!"

"Good!" breathed Hooker, as he rose in his stirrups and looked.

"Why good?" she demanded curiously.

"The's only three of 'em," answered Bud. "I was afraid they might be in front," he explained, as she gazed at him with a puzzled smile.

"Yes," she said; "but what will you do if they catch us?"

"They won't catch us," replied Hooker confidently. "Not while I've got my rifle. Aha!" he exclaimed, still looking back, "now we know all about it--that sorrel is Manuel del Rey's!"

"And will you kill him?" challenged Gracia, rousing suddenly at the name. Hooker pretended not to hear. Instead, he cocked his eye up at the eastern mountain, whence from time to time came muffled rifle-shots, and turned his horse to go. There was trouble over there to the east somewhere--Alvarez and his Yaquis, still harrying the retreating rebels--and some of it might come their way.

"Ah, how I hate that man!" raged Gracia, spurring her horse as she scowled back at the galloping Del Rey and his men who were riding onward rapidly.

"All right," observed Bud with a quizzical smile, "I'll have to kill him for you then!"

She gazed at him a moment with eyes that were big with questioning, but the expression on his rugged face baffled her.

"I would not forget it," she cried impulsively. "No, after all I have suffered, I think I could love the man who would meet him face to face! But why do you--ah!" she cried, with a sudden tragic bitterness. "You smile! You have no thought for me--you care nothing that I am afraid of him! Ah, _Dios_, for a man who is brave--to rid me of this devil!"

"Never mind!" returned Bud, his voice thick with rising anger. "If I kill him it won't be for _you_!"

He jumped Copper Bottom ahead to avoid her, for in that moment she had touched his pride. Yes, she had done more than that--she had destroyed a dream he had, a dream of a beautiful woman, always gentle, always noble, whom he had sworn to protect with his life. Did she think he was a _pelado_ Mexican, a hot-country lover, to be inflamed by a glance and a smile? Then Phil could have her!

"Ah, Bud!" she appealed, spurring up beside him, "you did not understand! I know you are brave--and if he comes"--she struck her pistol fiercely--"I will kill him myself!"

"Never mind," answered Bud in a kinder voice. "I'll take care of you. Jest keep your horse in the trail," he added, as she rode on through the brush, "and I'll take care of Del Rey."

He beckoned her back with a jerk of the head and resumed his place in the lead. Here was no place to talk about men and motives. The mountain above was swarming with rebels, there were _rurales_ spurring behind--yes, even now, far up on the eastern hillside, he could see armed men--and now one was running to intercept them!

Bud reached for his rifle, jacked up a cartridge, and sat crosswise in his saddle. He rode warily, watching the distant runner, until suddenly he pulled in his horse and threw up a welcoming hand. The man was Amigo--no other could come down a hillside so swiftly--and he was signaling him to wait.