They had proceeded only a short distance when De Launay, without warning, spurred his horse into a run, swinging him at the same time from side to side of the road. Turned in his saddle, he raised his hand and the staccato rattle of his automatic sounded like the roll of a drum. The startled officers fired and missed his elusive form.

They had their aim disarranged by the sudden jolt and stoppage of the car. De Launay had shot the two front tires and a rear one to pieces.

The discomfited policemen saw him disappearing down the road in a cloud of dust from which echoed his mocking laugh and a chanted, jubilant verse that had not been heard in that region for nineteen years:

"My Louisiana! Louisiana Lou!"

CHAPTER XI

JIM BANKER HITS THE TRAIL

When Jim Banker, the prospector, hurried from the hotel, he was singularly agitated for a man merely suffering from the shyness of the desert wanderer in the presence of a pretty woman. His furtive looks and the uneasy glances he cast behind him, no less than the panicky character of his flight, might have aroused further question on the part of those he left, had they been in a position to observe the man.

He made no pause until he had gained the comparative seclusion of Johnny the Greek's place, which he found almost deserted after the riot of which De Launay had been the center. Johnny had succeeded in getting rid of the officers without the discovery of his illicit operations, and Snake Murphy was once more in his place ready to dispense hospitality. Few remained to accept it, however, the imminent memory of the police having frightened all others away. A liberal dispensation of money and the discovery that De Launay's coat and shoes were of excellent make and more valuable than those he had lost, had secured the silence of the man whom De Launay had robbed, and he had departed some time since.

Banker sidled into the upstairs room and made his way to the end of the bar, where he called huskily for whisky. Having gulped a couple of fiery drinks, he shivered and straightened up, his evil eyes losing their look of fright.

"Say, Murph," he whispered, hoa.r.s.ely. "They's the devil to pay!"

"How come?" asked Murphy, yawning.

"You remember French Pete, who was killed back in nineteen hundred?"

"The Basco? Sure I do. I got a reminder, hain't I? Louisiana done shot me up before he went out an' beefed Pete--if he did beef him."

"_If_ he did? Whatever makes you say that? If he _didn't_--who did?"

Jim blurted out the question in a gasp, as though fairly forcing utterance of the words. Murphy flicked a sidelong look at him and then bent his absent gaze across the room.

"Oh--I dunno. Never knew Louisiana to use a rifle, though. The dare-devil! I can hear him now, ridin' off a-laughin' and a-chortlin'

"Back to Whisky Chitto; to Beau Regarde bayou; To my Louisiana--Louisiana Lou.

"Remember the feller's singin', Jim?"

The few men in the place had turned startled eyes as Murphy whined the doggerel ballad nasally. It was strange to them, but Banker shivered and shrank from the grinning bartender.

"Stop it, yuh darn fool! yuh gi' me the creeps! W'at's the matter with everything to-day? Everywhere I go some one starts gabblin' about mines and French Pete an' this all-fired--Louisiana! It's a d.a.m.n good thing there ain't any more like him around here."

"W'at's that about mines--an' French Pete? Yuh was the one that mentioned _him_."

Banker leaned confidentially nearer. "Snake, d'yuh think old Ike Brandon didn't know where the mine was?"

Snake regarded him contemptuously. "Yuh reckon Ike would have lived and died pore as a heifer after a hard winter if he'd a knowed? You're loco, Jim: plumb, starin', ravin' loco!"

But Jim only leaned closer and dropped his voice until it was almost inaudible.

"Maybe so. But did you or any one else ever know what language them Bascos talks?"

"French, I reckon," said Snake, indifferently.

"French, no, sir! Charlie Grandjean, that used to ride fer Perkins & Company was French and he told me once that they didn't talk no French nor nothin' like it. They talks their own lingo and there ain't n.o.body but a Basco that knows this Basco talk."

"Well," said Snake, easily. "What's the answer? I'll bite."

"French Pete's gal has lit in here all spraddled out an' lookin' fer French Pete's mine," croaked Banker, impressively. Snake was owlishly dense.

"His gal? Never knew he had a gal."

"He had one, a plenty: sort of a gashly critter like a witch, with teeth all same like a lobo. Kind 'at'd stick a knife in yuh quick as look at yuh."

"I reckon I won't go sparkin' her none, then. Well, how's this here Basco lady with the enchantin' ways allow she's goin' to find Pete's mine?"

"That's what I'm askin' yuh? How's she goin' to find it? Yuh reckon she comes pirootin' out here all the way from Basco regions just on the hunch that she can shut her eyes an' walk to it?"

"Maybe--if she's full o' witchcraft. I reckon she stands as good a chance that a way as any one does. Drink up and ferget it, Jim."

"I been a-thinkin', Snake. Brandon didn't know where it was. But maybe Pete leaves a writin', say, which he tells Ike to send to his folks.

It's in Basco, see, and Ike can't read it nor n.o.body else, so they sends it to this Basco place and the gal gits it. If that ain't right why ever does this Basco lady come a-runnin' out here?"

"If it is right, why does she delay all these years?" asked Snake, pertinently.

"Which yuh ain't seen her, Snake. I makes a guess this gal ain't more'n risin' two or three years when she gets that Basco note. She has to grow up, and when she gets big enough the war done come along and keeps her holed up until now. Yuh can gamble she knows where that mine was."

Snake pondered this theory thoughtfully. "Yuh may be right at that,"

he admitted, an expression of wonder pa.s.sing over his features. "But yuh been to see her? What she say about it?"

"Huh! She was askin' _me_ if I knowed where it was. But that was just a blind to put me off'n the track--an' she probably wanted to make sure no one else had found it. She was quizzin' that Pettis girl, too, makin' sure Ike hadn't told _her_ nothin'."

"Yuh may be right," admitted Snake again. "G.o.d-dlemighty! Yuh reckon she'll find it?"

Jim leered evilly at him. "No, I don't reckon she will. But she might help _me_ find it."

"Howzzat?" Snake was startled.

"I gotta have a grubstake, Snake. How about it?"

"Jest outline this here project, Jim. Let me git the slant on it."

The two heads, one slick and black, though with streaks of gray, the other s.h.a.ggy, colorless, and unkempt, came together and a growl of hoa.r.s.e and carefully guarded whispers murmured at that end of the bar.

After ten minutes' talk, Snake went to the safe and returned with a roll of bills and a piece of paper, pen, and ink. He laboriously made out a doc.u.ment, which Banker as laboriously signed. Then Snake surrendered the money and the two rascals shook hands.

Banker at once became all furtive activity. For a few hours he slunk from store to store, buying necessaries for his trip. By nighttime he was ready, and before the moon had risen in the cold November sky he was hazing his burros southward toward the Nevada line.

Although he was mounted on a fairly good horse, his progress was necessarily slow, as he had to accommodate his pace to that of the sedate burros. He was in no hurry, however. With true, desert-born patience, he plodded along, making camp that night about ten miles from Sulphur Falls. The following day he resumed his snaillike pace, crawling out of the fertile valley to the gra.s.slands beyond, and so on and on until the night found him in the salt pan and the alkali. He pa.s.sed the Brandon ranch at Three Creek, long since sold and now occupied by a couple of Basques who had built up from sheep-herding for wages until they now owned and ran a fair flock of sheep. Here he did not stop, hazing his burros past as though he had suddenly acquired a reason for haste. When Twin Forks was a couple of miles to the rear he reverted to his former sluggish pace.

The next day was a repet.i.tion. He plodded on stolidly, making without hesitation for some spot which was ahead of him. Finally, that evening, he made camp about three miles north of Wallace's Lazy Y Ranch, near Willow Spring, and not very far from the gap in the wall of the Esmeraldas which marked the entrance to Shoestring Creek and Canyon.