The Mesa Trail.

by H. Bedford-Jones.

CHAPTER I-THE MAN WHO HAD BEEN

A ribbon of winding road leads northeast from the pueblo of Domingo and the snaky Bajada hill where gray rocks lie thickly; it is a yellowish ribbon of road, sweeping over the gigantic mesa toward Santa Fe and the sweetly glowing Blood of Christ peaks-great peaks of green spearing into the sky, white-crested, and tipped with blood at sunset.

Along this ribbon of dusty yellow road was crawling a flivver. It was crawling slowly, in a jerky series of advances and pauses; as it crept along its intermittent course, the woman who sat behind the wheel was cursing her iron steed in a thorough and heartfelt manner.

Both in flivver and woman was that which fired curious interest. The rear of the car was piled high with boxes and luggage; certain of the boxes were marked "Explosives-Handle With Care!" Prominent among this freight was a burlap sack tied about the neck and firmly roped to one of the top supports of the car.

The woman was garbed in ragged but neat khaki. From beneath the edges of an old-fashioned bonnet, tied beneath the chin, protruded wisps of grayish hair, like an aureole of silver. The woman herself was of strikingly large frame and great in girth; her arms, bare to the elbows, were huge in size. Yet this giantess was not unhealthily fat. Hardened by toil, her hands were gripped carefully upon the steering wheel as though she were in some fear of wrenching it asunder in an unguarded moment.

Her features were large, sun-darkened, creased and seamed with crow's-feet that betokened long exposure to wind and weather. Ever and anon she drew, with manifest enjoyment, at an old brown corncob pipe.

Above her firm lips and beak-like nose a pair of blue eyes struck out gaily and keenly at the world; eyes of a piercing, intense blue, whose brilliancy, as of living jewels, gave the lie to their surrounding tokens of toil and age.

"Drat it!" she burst forth, after a new bucking endeavour on the part of the car. "If I was to shoot this d.a.m.ned thing through the innards, maybe she'd quit sunfishin' on me! I'm goin' to sell her to Santy Fe sure's shooting; I'll get me a pair o' mules and a wagon, then I'll know what I'm doing. Dunno how come I ever was roped into buying this here contraption--"

She suddenly halted her observations. Laying aside her pipe and peering out from the side of the dusty windshield, her keen eyes narrowed upon the road ahead.

Against that yellowish ribbon, with its bordering emptiness of mesquite, greasewood, and sage, there was nothing moving; but squarely in the centre of the road showed up a dark, motionless blotch. It was the figure of a man lying as though asleep. No man would or could lie asleep in the middle of this road, however, under the withering blaze of the downpouring New Mexico sun.

Suddenly the fitful flivver coughed under more gas; it roared, bucked, darted ahead, bucked again, and a dozen yards from the prostrate man it went leaping forward as though impelled by vindictive spite to run over the motionless figure. The woman swore savagely. She seemed inexperienced as a chauffeuse; only by a hair's breadth did she manage to avoid the man, and then she stopped the car.

Her great size became more apparent as she alighted. Standing, she gazed down at the man, then leaned forward and turned the unfortunate vagrant upon his back. The body was listless to her hand, the head lolled idly.

"Hm!" said the woman, reflectively. "Ain't drunk. Ain't hurt. Hm!"

She reached into the car and produced a whiskey flask, then sat down in the dust and took upon her ample lap the head of the senseless man. A sudden deftness became manifest in her motions, an unguessed tenderness relieved the harshness of her features.

"This here is breakin' the law," she ruminated, pouring liquor between the lips of the vagrant, "but it ain't the first time Mehitabel Crump has broke laws to help some poor devil! Hm! Looks to me like he ain't et for quite a spell."

With increasing interest she surveyed the slowly reviving stranger.

He was fully as lank as she was stout, and must have stood a good six foot two in height. His clothes were tattered remnants of once sober black. Long locks of iron-gray hair hung about his ears. His features were careworn and haggard, yet in them lingered some indefinable suggestion of fine lines and deeply carven strength. Had Mehitabel Crump ever viewed Sir Henry Irving-which she had not-she might have guessed a few things about her "find."

Suddenly the eyes, the intensely black eyes, of the man opened. So did his lips.

"Angels and ministers of grace!" His voice, although faint, was touched with a deep intonation, a roundness of the vowels, a clarity of accent.

"As I do live and breathe, it is the kiss of lordly Bacchus which doth welcome me!"

"Take it calm," advised Mehitabel Crump, pityingly. "You'll have your right sense pretty soon. Many's the time I've seen Crump keeled over, and come to with his mind awandering. Jest take it calm, pilgrim. I'll have a bite o' cornbread--"

She lowered his head to the dust, rose, and went to the flivver.

Presently she returned with a slab of cold cornbread divided by bacon, and a desert water bottle.

"Heaps o' lunch in the car." She aided the gaunt one to sit up, and he clutched at the food feverishly. "My land! Ain't et real frequent lately, have ye?"

The man, his mouth full, shook his head dumbly. About his eyes was a brilliancy which told of sheer starvation. To the full as worldly wise as any person in broad New Mexico, the woman asked no questions as yet; she procured from the car a basket which contained the remainder of her luncheon, and set forth the contents.

"Figgered I might get held up 'fore reaching Santy Fe. If it warn't that dratted car, it sure would be something else, which same it is. d.a.m.ned good luck it ain't worse, as Crump used to say when Providence went agin' him."

She observed that the stranger ate ravenously, but drank sparingly. Not thirst had downed him, but starvation.

He seemed startled at her disconcertingly frank manner of speech. She put him down as something better than an ordinary hobo; an out-of-luck Easterner, possibly a lunger. He was fifty or so; with decent clothes, a shave, and a haircut, he might be a striking-looking fellow, she decided. Although he had a hard mouth, what Mehitabel Crump had learned to know as a whiskey mouth, it was steady lipped.

"You sure played in tough luck comin' this road," she said, musingly.

"So did I. Ain't nothing between here and Santy Fe 'cept Injuns, greasers, and rattlers, any one of which is worse'n the other two. These rocks is playin' h.e.l.l with my tires and the old Henry is coughin' fit to bust her innards. If I find the feller who sold her to me, I'd sure lay him one over the ear!"

Her simple meal finished, she began to stuff her corncob pipe. The man, still eating wolfishly, watched her with fascinated eyes. She gazed out at the snowy, sun-flooded Sangre de Cristo peaks and continued her soliloquy. When it suited her, Mehitabel Crump could be very garrulous; and when it suited her, she could be as taciturn as the mountains themselves.

"I ain't surprised at nothing no more, not these days. No, sir! When I first come to this country you knowed just what ye had to reckon agin'.

They was Injuns to fight, greasers to work devilment, claim jumpers to rob ye, and such. But now the Injuns is all towerist peddlers, the greasers is called 'natives' and runs the courts an' legislature, and gun toting ain't popular. A lone woman gets skinned plumb legal, when in the old days it would ha' been suicide to rob a female. Yes pilgrim, set right in at what's left, and don't bother to talk yet a spell."

She touched a match to her pipe, broke the match, tossed it away.

"If Crump hadn't blowed up with a dry fuse in a shaft we was sinking over in the Mogollons, where we was prospecting at the time, he'd be plumb astonished at the changes. Yes, and I bet he'd swear to see me driving one of them contraptions yonder! Poor Crump, I never had the heart to dig him up, though it was a right smart prospect we was workin'. But somehow I couldn't never work that claim, with him still in it that-a-way. I won't need the money, neither, if I've got hold of--"

She paused. Her gaze went to the devouring stranger. Abruptly she changed the subject.

"You don't look like you was much more'n a poor, innercent pilgrim without any brains to mention. Yet, stranger, I'd gamble that we'd stack up high in morals agin' such old-timers as Abel Dorales, him what's half greaser and half Mormon, or old Sandy Mackintavers, what come straight from Scotland to Arizony and made a forchin in thirty years of thieving!

Yes, I reckon ye've got a streak of real pay dirt in ye, stranger. And if I can't tell what breed o' cattle a man is by jest looking at him, it's a queer thing! I've knowed 'em all."

The complimented pilgrim bolted the last sc.r.a.p of food in sight, raised the canvas bag to his lips, and drank. Sighing, he wiped his lips with the frayed cuff of his sleeve. Then he disentangled his long legs and rose. One hand upon his heart, the other flourished magnificently, he made a bow that was the piteous ghost of a perished grandeur.

"Madam!" His voice rang out firmly now, a deep and sonorous ba.s.s.

"Madam, I thank you! In me you behold one who has received the plaudits of thousands, one who has bowed to the thunderous acclaim of--"

"What d'ye say your name was?" snapped Mehitabel Crump. Her voice was suddenly acid, her blue eyes ice. The other was manifestly disconcerted by her change of front.

"Madam, I am familiarly known as Thaddeus Roscius Shea. Under the more imposing t.i.tle of Montalembert I have made known to thousands the aspiring genius of the immortal Avonian bard. I avow it, madam-I am a Thespian! I suit the action to the word, the word to the action--"

"Huh!" cut in his audience with a ruthless lack of awe. "Huh! Never heard of them Thespians, but likely it's a new Mormon sect. I knowed a man of your name down to Silver City twelve year back; this Thady Shea was a good fightin' man, with one eye and a harelip. Glad to meet ye, pilgrim! I'm Mehitabel Crump, with Mrs. for a handle."

Something in her manner seemed mightily to embarra.s.s Mr. Shea, but he took a fresh start and set forth to conquer the difficulty.

"Madam, a Thespian is of no religious persuasion, but one who treads the boards and who wears the buskin of Thespis. You behold in me the first tragedian of the age. My _Hamlet_, madam, has been praised by discerning critics from Medicine Hat to Jersey City. The accursed moving pictures have ruined my art."

"Oh! It's usually whiskey or woman," said Mrs. Crump, her eyes ominous.

"So you're a stage actor, eh? Then that explains it."

"Explains, madam? Explains what?" faltered Shea, sensing a gathering storm.

"Your d.a.m.n foolishness. Shake it off, ye poor hobo! I no sooner hands ye a bit o' kindness than it swells ye up like a balloon. Now, don't you get gay with _me_, savvy? Don't come none o' that high-falutin' talk with me, or by h.e.l.l I'll paralyze ye! I did think for a minute that ye had the makin's of a man, but I apologize."