Ryan Marah Ellis - The Treasure Trail: A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine стр 15.

The slender gallant figure of his rider leaned forward looking, listening at every turn, and at the forks of the trail where a clump of squat mesquite and giant sahuarro made a screen, she checked the horse, and held her breath.

Good Pat, good horse! she whispered. Theyve got nothing that can run away from us. Well show them!

Then a mans quavering old voice came to her through the winding trail of the arroya. It was lifted tunefully insistent in an old-time song of the mining camps:

We made it, Pat! confided the girl grimly. We made it. Quiet nowquiet!

She peered out through the green mesquite as Captain Pike emerged from the west arroya on a gray burro, herding two other pack animals ahead of him into the south trail.

He rode jauntily, his old sombrero at a rakish angle, his eyes bright with enthusiasm supplied by that which he designated as a morning bracer, and his long gray locks bobbed in the breeze as he swayed in the saddle and droned his cheerful epic of the trail:

Hi there! you Balaamget into the road and keep a-going, you ornery little rat-tailed son-of-a-gun! Pick up your feet and travel, or Ill yank out your back bone and make a quirt out of it! For

The confessor of superlative wickedness droned his avowal in diminishing volume as the burros pattered along the white dust of the valley road, then the curve to the west hid them, and all was silence but for the rustle of the wind in the mesquite and the far bay of Singletons hounds circling a coyote.

But Pat pricked up his ears, and lifted his head as if feeling rather than hearing the growing thud of coming hoofs. The girl waited until they were within fifty feet, when she pursed up her lips and whistled the call of the meadow lark. It sounded like a fairy bugle call across the morning, and the roan was halted quickly at the forks of the road.

Howdy, señorita? he called softly. I cant see you, but your song beats the birds. Got a flag of truce? Willing to parley with the enemy?

Then she emerged, eyeing him sulkily.

You were going without seeing me! she stated with directness, and without notice of the quizzical smile of comradeship.

Certainly was, he agreed. When I got through the scrap with your disciple of kultur, my mug didnt strike me as the right decoration for a maidens bower. I rode out of the scrap with my scratches, taking joy and comfort in the fact that he had to be carried.

There was no reason for your being soso brutal! she decided austerely.

Lord love you, child, I didnt need a reasonI only wanted an excuse. Give me credit! I got away for fear Id go loco and smash Singleton for interfering.

Papa Phil only did his duty, standing for peace.

Huh, let the Neutral League do it! The trouble with Singleton is he hasnt brains enough to lubricate a balance wheel,he cant savvy a situation unless he has it printed in a large-type tract. Conrad was scared for fear Id stumbled on a crooked trail of his and would tell the boss, so he beat me to it with the lurid report that I made an assault on him! This looks like itnot! and he showed the slashes in his sombrero to make room for the blue banda around his head. Suppose you tell that Hun of yours to carry a gun like a real hombre instead of the tools of a second-story man. The neighbors could hear a gun, and run to my rescue.

The girl regarded his flippancy with disapproval.

He isnt my Hun, she retorted. I could worry along without him on our map,but after all, I dont know a single definite thing against him. Anyway, its decided Ive got to go away somewhere to school and be out of the ranch squabbles. Papa Phil thinks I get in bad company out here.

Meaning me?

Well, he said Captain Pike was demoralizing to the youthful mind. He didnt mention you. And Cap certainly did go the limit yesterday!

How so?

Well, he went to the Junction for his outfit stuff

Yes, and never showed up at the adobe until the morning star was in the sky!

I know, she confessed. I went with him. We stayed to see a Hart picture at the theater, and had the time of our young lives. At supper I announced that I was going to adopt Cap as a grandfather,and then of course he had to go and queer me by filling up on some rank whiskey he had smuggled in with the other food! My stars!he was put to bed singing that hed Hang his harp on a willow tree, and be off to the wars againYou neednt laugh!

But he did laugh, his blue eyes twinkling at her recital.

You poor kid! You have a hard time with the disreputables you pick up. Sure they didnt warn you against speaking to this reprobate?

Sure nothing! was the boyish reply. I was to be docked a months spending money if I dared go near Pedro Vijils adobe again while you were there, which was very foolish of Papa Phil! she added judicially. I reckon he forgot they tried that before.

And what happened?

I went down and borrowed double the amount from old Estevan, the trader at the Junction, and gave him an order against the ranch. Then Cap and I sneaked out a couple of three-year-olds and raced them down in the cottonwood flats against some colts brought down by an old Sierra Blanca Apache. We backed our nags with every peso, and that old brown murderer won! But Cap and I had a wonderful day while our coin lasted, andand you were going away without saying good-bye!

Kit Rhodes, who had blankly stated that he owned his horse and saddle and little beyond, looked at the spoiled plucky heiress of Granados ranches, and the laughter went out of his eyes.

She was beyond reason loveable even in her boyish disdain of restriction, and some day she would come back from the schools a very finished product, and thank the powers that be for having sent her out of knowledge of happy-go-lucky chums of the ranges.

Granados ranches had been originally an old Spanish grant reaching from a branch of the intermittent Rio Altar north into what is now Arizona, and originally was about double the size of Rhode Island. It was roughly divided into the home or hacienda ranch in Arizona, and La Partida, the cattle range portion, reaching far south into Sonora. Even the remnant of the grant, if intelligently managed, would earn an income satisfactory for a most extravagant princess royal such as its present chatelaine seemed to Rhodes.

But he had noted dubiously that the management was neither intelligent nor, he feared, square. The little rancherias scattered over it in the fertile valleys, were worked on the scratch gravel, ineffective Mexic method by the Juans and Pedros whose family could always count on mesquite beans, and camotes if the fields failed. There was seed to buy each year instead of raising it. There was money invested in farming machinery, and a bolt taken at will from a thresher to mend a plow or a buggy as temporarily required. The flocks of sheep on the Arizona hills were low grade. The cattle and horse outfits were south in La Partida, and the leakage was beyond reason, even in a danger zone of the border land.