"You scandalous old varmint!" grinned Kit. "Go on with your weak-minded amus.e.m.e.nts, taking advantage of a poor lone cripple,--refused by the army, and a victim of the latest German atrocity! I suppose--I suppose,"--he continued darkly, "everyone on and around Granados agrees that I was the villain in the a.s.sault?"

"I couldn't say as to that," returned Pike judicially. "Dona Luz would dose you, and plaster you, just the same if you had killed a half dozen instead of knocking the wind out of one. She's pretty fine and all woman, but naturally since they regard you as my _companero_ they are shy about expressing themselves when I'm around--all except Singleton--and you heard him."

"Good and plenty," agreed Kit. "Say, I'm going to catch up on sleep while I've a chance, and you rustle along and get any tag ends of things needed for the trail. I'm going to strike for Mesa Blanca, as that will take us up into the country of that Alisal mine. If we go broke there is Mesa Blanca ranch work to fall back on for a grub stake, but from what I hear we can dry wash enough to buy corn and flour, and the hills are full of burro meat. We'll browse around until we either strike it rich, or get fed up with trying. Anyway, _Companero_, we will be in a quiet, peaceful pastoral land, close to nature, and out of reach of Teuton guile and monkey wrenches. _Buenas noches_, senor. I'm asleep!"

Pike closed the door, and went from the semi-dark of the adobe out into the brilliant sunshine where Billie, with a basket, was waiting under the _ramada_ with Merced, and Merced looked gloomy lest Pedro should be blamed by Senor Singleton for practically turning his family out of the adobe that it might be given over to the loco Americano.

"Tomorrow, can he go?" she asked hopefully. "Me, I have a fear. Not before is the adobe here watched by hidden men at night, and that is very bad! Because that he is friend to you I say to everybody that I think the Americano is dying in our house, but today he talks, also he is laughing. No more sick?"

"No more sick, sure not, but it will be one more day. A man does not bleed like a gored bull and ride the next day under a sky hot enough to fry eggs. The tea of Dona Luz drove off the fever, and he only sleeps and talks, and sleeps again, but sick? Not a bit!"

"Nor--nor sorry, I reckon?" ventured Billie.

"Why, no child, not that I could notice. That scalawag doesn't seem to have much conscience concerning his behavior."

"Or his language!" she added.

"Sure, that was some invocation he offered up! But just between pals, Billie, you ought to have been in hearing."

"I--I don't suppose he even remembers that I was," she remarked, and then after a silence, "or--or even mentioned--us?"

"Why, no, Billie. You made the right guess when you sized him up and thought he couldn't hold the job. He certainly doesn't belong, Billie, for this ranch is the homing nest of the peace doves, and he's just an ungainly young game rooster starting out with a dare against the world, and only himself for a backer. Honest,--if that misguided youth had been landed in jail, I don't reckon there's anyone in Arizona with little enough sense to bail him out."

"Likely not," said Billie. "Well, there's the basket from Tia Luz, and I might as well go home."

CHAPTER V

AN "ADIOS"--AND AFTER

Two days later in the blue clear air of the Arizona morning a sage hen slipped with her young through the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s by the irrigation ditch, and a flock of quail raised and fluttered before the quick rhythmic beat of a loping horse along the trail in the mesquite thicket.

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. "They've got nothing that can run away from us. We'll show them!"

Then a man's 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:

_Oh, Mexico! we're coming, Mexico!

Our six mule team, Will soon be seen, On the trail to Mexico!_

"We made it, Pat!" confided the girl grimly. "We made it. Quiet now--quiet!"

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:

_A--and when we've been there long enough, And back we wish to go, We'll fill our pockets with the shining dust And then leave Mexico!

Oh--Mexico!

Good-bye my Mexico!

Our six mule team will then be seen On the trail from Mexico._

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

_My name was Captain Kidd as I sailed As I sailed, My name was Captain Kidd, As I sailed!

My name was Captain Kidd And most wickedly I di-i-id All holy laws forbid As I sailed!_

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 Singleton's hounds circling a coyote.

But Pat p.r.i.c.ked 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, senorita?" he called softly. "I can't 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 sc.r.a.p with your disciple of _kultur_, my mug didn't strike me as the right decoration for a maiden's bower. I rode out of the sc.r.a.p with my scratches, taking joy and comfort in the fact that he had to be carried."

"There was no reason for your being so--so brutal!" she decided austerely.

"Lord love you, child, I didn't need a reason--I only wanted an excuse. Give me credit! I got away for fear I'd 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 hasn't brains enough to lubricate a balance wheel,--he can't savvy a situation unless he has it printed in a large-type tract. Conrad was scared for fear I'd 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 a.s.sault on him! This looks like it--not!" 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 isn't my Hun," she retorted. "I could worry along without him on our map,--but after all, I don't know a single definite thing against him. Anyway, it's decided I've 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 didn't 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!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You poor kid, you have a hard time with the disreputables you pick up."]

"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 he'd 'Hang his harp on a willow tree, and be off to the wars again'--You needn't laugh!"