The Mystery of the Barranca

“To Vera, my daughter and gentle collaborator, whose nimble fingers lightened the load of many labors, this book is lovingly dedicated.”

I

“Oh Bob, just look at them!”

Leaning down from his perch on the sacked mining tools which formed the apex of their baggage, Billy Thornton punched his companion in the back to call his attention to a scene which had spread a blaze of humor over his own rich crop of freckles.

As a matter of fact, the spectacle of two men fondly embracing can always be depended on to stir the crude Anglo-Saxon sense of humor. In this case it was rendered still more ridiculous by age and portliness, but two years’ wandering through interior Mexico had accustomed Thornton’s comrade, Robert Seyd, to the sight. After a careless glance he resumed his contemplation of the crowd that thronged the little station. Exhibiting every variety of Mexican costume, from the plain white blanket of the peons to the leather suits of the rancheros and the hacendados, or owners of estates, it was as picturesque and brilliant in color and movement as anything in a musical extravaganza. The European clothing of a young girl who presently stepped out of the ticket office emphasized the theatrical flavor by its vivid contrast. She might easily have been the captive heroine among bandits, and the thought actually occurred to Billy. While she paused to call her dog, a huge Siberian wolf hound, she was hidden from Seyd’s view by the stout embracers. Therefore it was to the dog that he applied Billy’s remark at first.

“Isn’t she a peach?”

She seemed the finest of her race that he had ever seen, and Seyd was just about to say that she carried herself like a “perfect lady” when the dissolution of the aforesaid embrace brought the girl into view. He stopped—with a small gasp that testified to his astonishment at her unusual type.

Although slender for her years—about two and twenty—her throat and bust were rounded in perfect development. The clear olive complexion was undoubtedly Spanish, yet her face lacked the firm line that hardens with the years. Perhaps some strain of Aztec blood—from which the Spanish-Mexican is never free—had helped to soften her features, but this would not account for their pleasing irregularity. A bit rétrousée, the small nose with its well-defined nostrils patterned after the Celtic. Had Seyd known it, the face in its entirety—colors and soft contours—is to be found to this day among the descendants of the sailors who escaped from the wreck of the Spanish Armada on the west coast of Ireland. Pretty and unusual as she was, her greatest charm centered in the large black eyes that shone amid her clear pallor, conveying in broad day the tantalizing mystery of a face seen for an instant through a warm gloaming. In the moment that he caught their velvet glance Seyd received an impression of vivacious intelligence altogether foreign in his experience of Mexican women.

As she was standing only a few feet away, he knew that she must have heard Billy’s remark; but, counting on her probable ignorance of English, he did not hesitate to answer. “Pretty? Well, I should say—pretty enough to marry. The trouble is that in this country the ugliness of the grown woman seems to be in inverse ratio to her girlish beauty. Bet you the fattest hacendado is her father. And she’ll give him pounds at half his age.”

“Maybe,” Billy answered. “Yet I’d be almost willing to take the chance.”

As the girl had turned just then to look at the approaching train neither of them caught the sudden dark flash, supreme disdain, that drew an otherwise quite tender red mouth into a scarlet line. But for the dog they would never have been a whit the wiser. For as the engine came hissing along the platform the brute sprang and crouched on the tracks, furiously snarling, ready for a spring at the headlight, which it evidently took for the Adam’s apple of the strange monster. The train still being under way, the poor beast’s faith would have cost it its life but for Seyd’s quickness. In the moment that the girl’s cry rang out, and in less time than it took Billy to slide from his perch, Seyd leaped down, threw the dog aside, and saved himself by a spring to the cowcatcher.

“Oh, you fool! You crazy idiot!” While thumping him soundly, Billy ran on, “To risk your life for a dog—a Mexican’s, at that!”

But he stopped dead, blushed till his freckles were extinguished, as the girl’s voice broke in from behind.

“And the Mexican thanks you, sir. It was foolhardy, yes, and dearly as I love the dog I would not have had you take such a risk. But now that it is done—accept my thanks.” As the stouter of the embracers now came bustling up, she added in Spanish, “My uncle, señor.”

At close range she was even prettier; but, though gratitude had wiped out the flash of disdain, a vivid memory of his late remarks caused Seyd to turn with relief to the hacendado. During the delivery of effusive thanks he had time to cancel a first impression—gained from a rear view of a gaudy jacket—of a fat tenor in a Spanish opera, for the man’s head and features were cast in a massive mold. His big fleshy nose jutted out from under heavy brows that overshadowed wide, sagacious eyes, Indian-brown in color. If the wind and weather of sixty years had tanned him dark as a peon, it went excellently with his grizzled mustache. Despite his stoutness and the costume, every fat inch of him expressed the soldier.

“My cousin, señor.”

Having been placed, metaphorically, in possession of all the hacendado’s earthly possessions, Seyd turned to exchange bows with a young man who had just emerged from the baggage-room—at least he seemed young at the first glance. A second look showed that the impression was largely due to a certain trimness of figure which was accentuated by the perfect fit of a suit of soft-dressed leather. When he raised his felt sombrero the hair showed thin on his temples. Neither were his poise and imperturbable manner attributes of youth.

“It was very clever of you, señor.”

A slight peculiarity of intonation made Seyd look up. “Jealous,” he thought, yet he was conscious of something else—some feeling too elusively subtle to be analyzed on the spur of the moment. Suggesting, as it did, that he had made a “gallery play,” the remark roused in him quick irritation. But had it been possible to frame an answer there was no time, for just then the familiar cry, “Vámonos!” rang out, and the American conductor hustled uncle, niece, and her dog into the nearest car.

The entire incident had occupied little more than a moment, and as, a little bewildered by its rush, Seyd stood looking after the train he found himself automatically raising his cap in reply to a fluttering handkerchief.

“You Yankees are certainly very enterprising.”

Turning quickly, Seyd met again the glance of subtle hostility. But, though he felt certain that the remark had been called forth by his salute, he had no option but to apply it to the mining kit toward which the other was pointing.

“You are for the mines, señor? In return for your service to my cousin it is, perhaps, that I can be of assistance—in the hiring of men and mules?”

While equally quiet and subtle, the patronage in his manner was easier to meet. Undisturbed, however, when Seyd declined his offer, he sauntered quietly away.

“Bueno! As you wish.”

II

“I’ll be with you in a minute, folks.”

To appreciate the accent which the American station agent laid on “folks” it is necessary that one should have been marooned for a couple of years in a ramshackle Mexican station with only a chocolate-skinned henchman, or mozo, for companion. It asserted at once welcome and patriotic feeling.

“You know this isn’t the old United States,” he added, hurrying by. “These greasers are the limit. Close one eye for half a minute and when you open it again it’s a cinch you’ll find the other gone. If they’d just swipe each other’s baggage it wouldn’t be so bad. But they steal their own, then sue the company for the loss. Here, you sons of burros, drop that!” with which he dived headlong into the midst of the free fight that a crowd of cargadores, or porters, were waging over the up train baggage.

Taking warning, the two returned to their own baggage. As they waited, talking, these two closest of friends offered a fairly startling contrast. In the case of Seyd, a graduate in mining of California University, years of study and strain had tooled his face till his aggressive nose stood boldly out above hollowed cheeks and black-gray eyes. A trifle over medium height, the hundred and sixty pounds he ought to have carried had been reduced a good ten pounds by years of prospecting in Mexico and Arizona. This loss of flesh, however, had been more than made up by a corresponding gain in muscle. Moving a few paces around the baggage, he exhibited the easy, steady movement that comes from the perfect coordination of nerve and muscle. His feet seemed first to feel, then to take hold of the ground. In fact, his entire appearance conveyed the impression of force under perfect control, ready to be turned loose in any direction.

Shorter than Seyd by nearly half a foot, Billy Thornton, on the other hand, was red where the other was dark, loquacious instead of thoughtful. From his fiery shock of red hair and undergrowths of red stubble to his slangy college utterance he proved the theory of the attraction of opposites. Bosom friends at college, it had always been understood between them that when either got his “hunch” the other should be called in to share it. And as the luck—in the shape of a rich copper mine—had come first to Seyd, he had immediately wired for Billy. They were talking it over, as they so often before had done, when the agent returned.

“Why—you’re the fellow that was down here last fall, ain’t you?” he asked, offering his hand. “Didn’t recognize you at first. You don’t mean to say that you have denounced—”

“—The Santa Gertrudis prospect?” Seyd nodded. “He means the opposition I told you we might expect.” He answered Billy’s look of inquiry.

“Opposition!” The agent spluttered. “That’s one word for it. But since you’re so consarnedly cool about it, mister, let me tell you that this makes the eleventh time that mine has been denounced, and so far nobody has succeeded in holding it.” Looking at Billy, probably as being the more impressionable, he ran on: “The first five were Mex and as there were no pesky foreign consuls to complicate the case with bothersome inquiries, they simply vanished. One by one they came, hit the trail out there in a cloud of dust, and were never seen again.