"Prather went by the range trail, of course?" Jack asked Galway.

"No, straight out across the desert," said Galway.

"Straight out across the desert!" exclaimed Jack, mystified.

For one had a choice of two routes to Agua Fria, which was well over the border in Mexico. Not a drop of water was to be had on the way across the trackless plateau, but halfway on the range trail was a camping-place, Las Cascadas, where a spring which spouted in a tiny cascade welcomed the traveller. Under irrigation, most of the land for the whole stretch between the two towns would be fertile. There was said to be a big underground run at Agua Fria that could be pumped at little expense.

"All I can make out of Prather's taking a straight line, which really is slower, as you know, on account of the heavy sand in places, is to look over the soil," said Galway. "He may be preparing to get a concession in Mexico at the same time as on this side, so as to secure control of the whole valley. It means railroads, factories, new towns, millions--but you and I have talked all this before in our dreams."

"Who was with him?" Jack asked.

"Pedro Nogales. He seems to have taken quite a fancy to Pedro and Pedro is acting as guide. Leddy recommended him, I suppose."

"No one else?"

"No."

"Good!" said Jack.

As they turned into the side street where the front of Jack's bungalow was visible, Jim Galway observed that they had seen nothing of Leddy or any of his followers.

"Maybe he's gone to join Prather," said Bob Worther.

But Jack paid no attention to the remark. He was preoccupied with the first sight of his ranch in over two months.

"It will be all right!" he called out to the crowd in his yard; for the others who had met him at the station were waiting for him there. "Bob, those umbrella-trees could shade a thin, short man now, even if he didn't hug the trunk! Firio has done well, hasn't he?" he concluded, after he had walked through the garden and surveyed the fields and orchards in fond comparison as to progress.

"The best I ever knew an Indian to do!" said Jim Galway.

"And everything kept right on growing while I was away! That's the joy of planting things. They are growing for somebody, if not for you!"

Inside the house he found Firio, with the help of some of the ranchers, taking the pictures out of their cases. Firio surveyed the buccaneer for some time, squinting his eyes and finally opening them saucer-wide in approval.

"You!" he said to Jack. And of the Sargent, after equally deliberate observation, he said: "A lady!"

That seemed about all there was to say and expressed the thought of the onlookers.

"And, Firio, now it's the trail!" said Jack.

"_Si, si_!" said Firio, ever so softly. "We take rifles?"

"Yes. Food for a week and two-days' water."

It pleased Jack to hang the portraits while Firio was putting on Jag Ear's pack; and he made it a ceremony in which his silence was uninterrupted by the comments of the ranchers. They stood in wondering awe before John Wingfield, Knight, hung where he could watch the Eternal Painter at his sunset displays and looking at the "Portrait of a Lady"

across the breadth of the living-room, whose neutral tones made a perfect setting for their dominant genius.

"I believe they are at home," said Jack, with a fond look from one to the other, when Firio came to say that everything was ready.

"Senor Jack," whispered Firio insinuatingly, "for the trail you wear the grand, glad trail clothes and the big spurs. I keep them shiny--the big spurs!" He was speaking with the authority of an expert in trail fashions, who would consider Jack in very bad form if he refused.

"Why, yes, Firio, yes; it is so long since we have been on the trail!"

And he went into the bedroom to make the change.

"I've never seen him quite so dumb quiet!" said Worther.

Jack certainly had been quiet, ominously quiet and self-contained. When he came out of the bedroom he was without the jaunty freedom of manner that Little Rivers always a.s.sociated with his full regalia. In place of the dreamy distances in his eyes on such occasions were a sad preoccupation and determination. When they went outside to Firio and the waiting ponies, the Eternal Painter was in his evening orgy of splendor.

But even Jack did not look up at the sky this time as he walked along in silence with his fellow-citizens to the point where the farthest furrow of his ranch had been drawn across the virgin desert. His foot was already in the stirrup when Jim Galway spoke the thought of all:

"Jack, there's only two of you, and if it happened that you met Leddy--"

"It is Prather that I want to see," Jack answered.

"But Leddy's whole gang! We don't know what your plans are, but if there's going to be a mix-up, why, we've got to be with you!"

"No!" said Jack, decidedly. "Remember, Jim, you were to trust me. This is a mission that requires only two; it is between Prather and me. We are going to get acquainted for the first time."

Already Firio, riding Wrath of G.o.d, had started, and the bells of Jag Ear were jingling, while the rifles, their bores so clean from Firio's care, danced with the gleams of sunset in their movement with the burro's jogging trot. Jack sprang into the saddle, his face lighting as the foot came home in the stirrup.

"It will be all right!" he called back.

P.D. in the freshness of his long holiday, feeling a familiar pressure of a leg, hastened to overtake his companions; and the group of Little Riversites watched a chubby horseman and a tall, gaunt horseman, bathed in gold, riding away on a hazy sea of gold, with Jag Ear's bells growing fainter and fainter, until the moving specks were lost in the darkness.

x.x.xVI

AROUND THE WATER-HOLE

Easy traveller had turned speedy traveller, on a schedule. Never had he and Firio ridden so fast as in pursuit of John Prather, who had eight hours' start of them on a two-days' journey. Jag Ear had to trot all the time to keep up. Ounce by ounce he was drawing on his sinking fund of fat in a const.i.tutional crisis.

"I keep his hoofs good. I keep his wind good. All right!" said Firio.

It was after midnight before the steady jingle of Jag Ear's orchestra had any intermission. An hour for food and rest and the little party was off again in the delicious cool of the night, toward a curtain p.r.i.c.ked with stars which seemed to be drawn down over the edge of the world.

"What sort of horses had Prather and Nogales?" Jack asked. He must reach the water-hole as soon as Prather; for it was not unlikely that Prather might have fresh mounts waiting there to take him on to the nearest railroad station in Mexico.

"Look good, but bad. Nogales no know horses!" Firio answered.

"And they rode in the heat of the day!" said Jack, confidently.

"_Si_! And we ride P.D. and Wrath of G.o.d!"

There were no sign-posts on this highway of desert s.p.a.ce except the many-armed giant cacti, in their furrowed armor set with cl.u.s.ters of needles, like tawny auroras gleaming faintly; no trail on the hard earth under foot, mottled with bunches of sagebrush and sprays of low-lying cacti, all as still as the figures of an inlaid flooring in the violet sheen, with an occasional quick, irregular, shadowy movement when a frightened lizard or a gopher beat a precipitate retreat from the invading thud of hoofs in this sanctuary of dust-dry life. And the course of the hoofs was set midway between the looming ma.s.ses of the mountain walls of the valley.

Firio listened for songs from Senor Jack; he waited for stories from Senor Jack; but none came. He, the untalkative one of the pair, the living embodiment of a silent and happy companionship back and forth from Colorado to Chihuahua, liked to hear talk. Without it he was lonesome.

If, by the criterion of a school examination, he never understood more than half of what Jack said, yet, in the measure of spirit, he understood everything.