"Listen to me, young lady, if I can't get Singleton on the wire I'll get on a horse and go up there!"

"And you listen to me, young man, it wouldn't do you a bit of good, for just now he is nearly having a fit, and writing telegrams about something more important than the horse corrals."

"There is nothing more important this day and date," insisted Kit.

"Well, if you were as strictly a white dove advocate as Papa Singleton is, and as neutral, and then saw a full page Sunday supplement of your pet picture fraulein, working for your pet charity and sifting poison into hospital bandages and powdered gla.s.s in jellies for the soldiers of the Allies, I reckon you would change your mind."

"Powdered gla.s.s!--in _feed_!" repeated Kit, stunned at the words and the sudden thought they suggested. "Great G.o.d, girl, you don't have to go to the eastern papers for _that_! You've got the same trick right here in Granados this minute! Why--d.a.m.n you!"

The receiver fell from his hand as a crushing blow was dealt him from the door at his back. He heard a girl's scream in the distance as he grappled with Conrad and saved himself a second blow from the automobile wrench in the manager's hands. It fell to the tiles between them, and Rhodes kicked it to one side as he struck and struck again the white, furious face of Conrad.

"The wrench! Tomas, the wrench! Give it to him! The Americano would murder me!" shouted Conrad.

Tomas had other things to think of. He had heard as much as Conrad of the telephone discourse, and was aware of his pinto standing placidly not fifty feet away, with all the d.a.m.ning evidence in the case tied to the back of the saddle!

Juanito, however, ran like a cat at his master's call and caught up the wrench, but halted when Pike closed on his shoulder and pressed a cold little circle of blue steel against his ribs.

"Not this time, _muchacho_!" he shrilled, "drop it! This is a man's game, and you're out."

The men came running, and others attempted to interfere, but the little old man waved the gun at them and ordered them to keep their distance.

"No crowding the mourners!" he admonished them gleefully. "I've a hunch your man started it, and my man will finish it. I don't know what it's about, Kit, but give him h.e.l.l on suspicion! Go to it, boy,--do it again! Who-ee!--that was a sock-dolager! Keep him off you, Kit, he's a gouger, and has the weight. Give it to him standing, and give it to him good! That's it! Ki-yi! h.e.l.l's bells and them a-chiming!"

For the finale of that whirl of the two striking, staggering, cursing men, was unexpectedly dramatic. They had surged out into the open, but Conrad, little by little and step by step, or rather stagger by stagger, had given way before the mallet-like precision of the younger man's fists until Kit's final blow seemed actually to lift him off his feet and land him--standing--against the adobe wall. An instant he quivered there, and then fell forward, gla.s.sy eyed and limp.

Singleton's car came whirling down the lane. Billie leaped from it before it stopped, and ran in horror to the p.r.o.ne figure. One of the older Mexicans tried to ward her off from the sight.

"No good, senorita, it is the death of him," he said gently. "One stroke like that on the heart and it is--_adios_!"

"What in the name of G.o.d--" began Singleton, and Kit wiped the blood from his eyes and faced him, staggering and breathless.

"Get him water! Get busy!" he ordered. "I don't think he's done for, not unless he has some mighty weak spot he should have had labelled before he waded into this."

The blood was still trickling from the cut in his head made by the wrench, and he presented an unholy appearance as they stared at him.

"I'll explain, Singleton, for I reckon you are white. I'll--after while----"

"You'll explain nothing to me!" retorted Singleton "If the man dies you'll explain to a jury and a judge; otherwise you'd better take yourself out of this country."

Kit blinked at those who were lifting Conrad and listening to his heart, which evidently had not stopped permanently.

"But give me a chance, man!" persisted Rhodes. "I need some mending done on this head of mine,--then I'll clear it up. Why, the evidence is right here--powdered gla.s.s for the stock at the far end of the trail--Herrara knows--Conrad's game--and----"

He did not know why words were difficult and the faces moved in circles about him. The blood soaking his shirt and blouse, and dripping off his sleeve was cause enough, but he did not even know that.

"Take him away, Captain Pike," said Singleton coldly. "He is not wanted any longer on either of the ranches. It's the last man I hire, Conrad can do it in future."

"Conrad, eh?" grunted Kit weakly, "you're a nice easy mark for the frankfurter game,--you and your pacifist bunch of near-traitors! Why man----"

But Singleton waved him away, and followed the men who were carrying Conrad to the bunk house.

"All right, _all_ right! But take care you don't meet with a nastier accident than that before you are done with this game!" he said shaking his fist warningly after Singleton, and then he staggered to his horse where Pike was waiting for him.

He got in the saddle, and reeled there a moment, conscious of hostile, watchful eyes,--and one girl's face all alone in the blur.

"Say," he said, "I heard you scream. You thought it was you I swore at. You're wrong there. But you are some little prophetess,--_you_ are! The job's gone, and Herrara's got away with the evidence, and the jig's up! But it wasn't you I cussed at--not--at--all! Come on, Pike.

This new ventilator in my head is playing h.e.l.l its own way. Come on--let's go by-bye!"

CHAPTER IV

IN THE ADOBE OF PEDRO VIJIL

"There ain't no such animal," decided Kit Rhodes seated on the edge of the bed in Pedro Vigil's adobe. His head was bandaged, his face a trifle pale and the odor of medicaments in the shadowy room of the one deep-barred window. "No, Captain, no man, free, white and twenty-one _could_ be such a fool. Can't Singleton see that if Conrad's story was true he'd have the constable after me for a.s.sault with intent to kill?

He's that sort!"

"Well, Singleton thinks Conrad would be justified in having you prosecuted, and jailed, and fined, and a few other things, but for the reputation of Granados they let you down easy. You know it's _the_ dovery for the Pa.s.s-up-the-fists of this section, and what the Arizona papers would do would be comic if they ever got hold of the fact that Singleton picked a new bird for the dove cage, and the dratted thing changed before their eyes to a fractious game rooster swinging a right like the hind leg of a mule! No, Bub, we're orderly, peaceable folks around here, so for the sake of our reputation Singleton has prevailed on his manager to be merciful to you, and Conrad has in true pacifist spirit let himself be prevailed upon."

"Which means," grinned Kit, "that I'm to be put off my guard, and done for nicely and quietly some moonless night when I take the trail! And he reports me either drunk or temporarily insane, does he? Well, when the next time comes I'll change that gentleman's mind."

"Shucks, Bub! Thank a fool's luck that your skull was only scratched, and don't go planning future wars. I tell you we are peace doves around here, and you are a stray broncho kicking up an undesirable dust in our front yard. Here is your coin. Singleton turned it over to me and I receipted for it, and we have enough between us to hit the Sonora trail, and there's not a bit of use in your hanging around here. You have no evidence. You are a stranger who ambled in, heard a sensational newspaper report of anti-ally criminal intent, and on the spot accused the highly respectable Granados rancho of indulging in that same variety of h.e.l.lishness! Now there is your case in a nutsh.e.l.l, Bub, and you wouldn't get the authorities to believe you in a thousand years!"

"What about you?"

"Oh, I have just little enough sense to believe your hunch is right, but that won't get you anywhere. They think I'm loco too! I've an idea there is a lot more and rottener activities down south of the line with which our Teutonic peace arbitrator is mixed up. But he's been on this job five years, all the trails are his, and an outsider can't get a look-in! Now Miguel Herrara has been doing gun-running across the border for someone, and Miguel was not only arrested by the customs officer, but Miguel was killed two nights ago--shot with his own gun so that it looks like suicide. Suicide nothing! His chief, whoever he is, was afraid Miguel would blunder or weaken under government persuasion, so Miguel was let out of the game. That case is closed, and no evidence against anyone. I reckon everyone knows that the guns and ammunition sneaked over is headed for Rancho Soledad. The owner of Soledad, Jose Perez, is the valued friend of our nice little Conrad, and it happens that Conrad left Granados this morning for that direction, ostensibly to negotiate with the political powers of Sonora concerning a military guard for La Partida in case revolutionary stragglers should ride north for fresh saddle-horses. All appeals to the neutral chair warmers at Washington wins us no protection from that source;--they only have guns and men enough to guard some cherished spots in Texas."

"Well, if the Teuton is able for a trail I reckon he got nothing worse in the sc.r.a.p than I, even if he did look like a job for the undertaker. That fellow travels on the strength of his belly and not the strength of his heart."

"So you say," observed Pike, grinning, "but then again there are others of us who travel on nerve and gall and never get any further!

Just put this in your pipe, Bub, and don't forget it: Conrad is _organised_ for whatever deviltry he is up to! There is no 'happen so'

in his schemes. He is a cog in some political wheel, and it's a fifty-fifty gamble as to whether the wheel is German or Mexican, but it is no little thing, and is not to be despised."

"But I can't see how Singleton, if Singleton is square even----"

"Singleton is a narrow gauge disciple of Universal Peace by decree--which, translated, means plain d.a.m.n fool. Lord, boy, if a pack of prairie wolves had a man surrounded, would he fold his hands with the hope that his peaceful att.i.tude would appeal to their better instincts or would he reach for a gun and give them protective pills?

The man of sense never goes without his gun in wolf land, but Singleton--well, in peace times he could have lived a long lifetime, and no one ever guessed what a weak sister he was, but he's sure out of place on the border."

"I'm tired wearing this halo," observed Rhodes, referring to the white handkerchief around his head. "Also some of the dope you gave me seems to be evaporating from my system, and I feel like hitting the Piman breeze. Can we strike trail tomorrow?"

"We cannot. Dona Luz has been dosing out the dope for you--Mexican women are natural doctors with their own sort of herbs--and she says three days before you go in the sun. I've a notion she sort of let the Mexicans think that you were likely to cash in, and you bled so like a stuck pig that it was easy enough to believe the worst."

"Perhaps that's why Conrad felt safe in leaving me outside of jail.

With Dona Luz as doctor, and a non-professional like you as a.s.sistant, I reckon he thought my chance of surviving that monkey wrench a.s.sault was slim, mighty slim!"

"Y--yes," agreed Pike, "under ordinary conditions he might have been justified in such surmise, but that would be figuring on the normal thickness of the normal civilized skull, but yours--why, Bub, all I'm puzzling over now is how it happens that the monkey wrench was only twisted a mite, not broke at all!"