Starr, of the Desert

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  STARR FINDS SOMETHING IN A SECRET ROOM

  That day Starr rode out into the country and looked at a few head of cowsand steers that a sickly American wanted to sell so he could go East forhis health (there being in most of us some peculiar psychological leaningtoward seeking health afar). Starr went back to town afterwards and madeRabbit comfortable in the corral, reasoning that if he were going to bewatched, he would be watched no matter where he went; but he ate hissupper in the dining room of the Plaza Hotel, and sat in the lobbytalking with a couple of facetious drummers until the mechanical piano inthe movie show across the street began to play.

  He went to the show, sat through it patiently, strolled out when it wasover, and visited a saloon or two. Then, when he thought his eveningmight be considered well rounded out with harmless diversions, he wentout to his cabin, following the main street but keeping well in theshadow as though he wished to avoid observation.

  He had reason to believe that some one followed him out there, which didnot displease him much. He lighted his lamp and fussed around for half anhour or so before he blew out the light and went to bed.

  At three o'clock in the morning, with a wind howling in from themountains, Starr got up and dressed in the dark, fumbling for a pair of"sneakers" he had placed beside his bed. He let himself out into thecorral, being careful to keep close to the wall of the house until hereached the high board fence. Here, too, he had to feel his way becauseof the pitchy blackness of the night; and if the rattling wind preventedhim from hearing any footsteps that might be behind him, it also coveredthe slight sound of his own progress down the fence to the shed. But hedid not think he would be seen or followed, for he had been careful tooil the latch and hinges of his door before he went to bed; and he wouldbe a faithful spy indeed who shivered through the whole night, watching aman who apparently slept unsuspectingly and at peace.

  Down the hole from the manger Starr slid, and into the arroyo bottom. Hestumbled over a can of some sort, but the wind was rattling everythingmovable, so he merely swore under his breath and went on. He was not arange man for nothing, and he found his way easily to the adobe housewith LAS NUEVAS over the door, and the adobe wall with the plank gatethat had been closed.

  It was closed now, and the house itself was black and silent. Starrstooped and gave a jump, caught the top of the wall with his hookedfingers, went up and straddled the top where it was pitch black againstthe building. For that matter, it was nearly pitch black whichever wayone looked, that night. He sat there for five minutes, listening andstraining his eyes into the enclosure. Somewhere a piece of corrugatediron banged against a board. Once he heard a cat meow, away back at therear of the lot. He waited through a comparative lull, and when the windwhooped again and struck the building with a fresh blast, Starr jumped tothe ground within the yard.

  He crouched for a minute, a shot-loaded quirt held butt forward in hishand. He did not want to use a gun unless he had to, and the loaded endof a good quirt makes a very efficient substitute for a blackjack. Butthere was no movement save the wind, so presently he followed the wall ofthe house down to the corner, stood there listening for awhile and wenton, feeling his way rapidly around the entire yard as a blind man feelsout a room that is strange to him.

  He found the garage, with a door that kept swinging to and fro in thewind, banging shut with a slam and then squealing the hinges as itopened again with the suction. He drew a breath of relief when he came tothat door, for he knew that any man who happened to be on guard wouldhave fastened it for the sake of his nerves if for nothing else.

  When he was sure that the place was deserted for the night, Starr wentback to the garage and went inside. He fastened the door shut behind himand switched on his pocket searchlight to examine the place. If he hadexpected to see the mysterious black car there he was disappointed, forthe garage was empty--which perhaps explained the swinging door, that hadbeen left open in the evening when there was no wind. Small comfort inthat for Starr, for it immediately occurred to him that the car wouldprobably return before daylight if it had gone after dark.

  He turned his hand slowly, painting the walls with a brush of brilliantlight. "Huh!" he grunted under his breath. For there in a far corner werefour Silvertown cord tires with the dust of the desert still clinging tothe creases of the lined tread. Near-by, where they had been torn off inhaste and flung aside, were the paper wrappings of four other tires,supposedly new.

  So they--he had no more definite term by which to call them--they hadsensed the risk of those unusual tires, and had changed for others of amore commonly-used brand! Starr wondered if some one had seen him lookingat tire-tracks, the young Mexican he had met on the side street, perhaps.Or the Mexican garage man may have caught him studying that track by thefilling-pump.

  "Well," Starr summed up the significance of the discovery, "the game'sopen; now we'll get action."

  He glanced down to make sure that he had not left any tracks on the floorand was glad he had not worn his boots. Then he snapped off the light,went out, and left the door swinging and banging as it had been before.If he learned no more, at least he was paid for the trip.

  He went straight to the rear door of the building, taking no pains toconceal his footsteps. The wind, he knew, would brush them out completelywith the sand and dust it sent swirling around the yard with every gust.As he had hoped, the door was not bolted but locked with a key, so he lethimself in with one of the pass keys he carried for just such work asthis. He felt at the windows and saw that the blinds were down, andturned on his light.

  The place had all the greasy dinginess of the ordinary print shop. Thepresses were here, and the motor that operated them. Being a bi-weeklyand not having much job printing to do, it was evident that _Las Nuevas_did not work overtime. Things were cleaned up for the night and ready forthe next day's work. It all looked very commonplace and as innocent asthe paper it produced.

  Starr went on slowly, examining the forms, the imperfect first proofs ofcirculars and placards that had been placed on hook files. AVISO! staredup at him in big, black type from the top of many small sheets, with thefollowing notices of sales, penalties attached for violations of certainordinances, and what not. But there was nothing that should not be there,nothing that could be construed as seditionary in any sense of the word.

  Still, some person or persons connected with this place had found itexpedient to change four perfectly good and quite expensive tires forfour new and perfectly commonplace ones, and the only explanationpossible was that the distinctive tread of the expensive ones had beenobserved. There must, Starr reasoned, be something else in this placewhich it would be worth his while to discover. He therefore wentcarefully up the grimy stairway to the rooms above.

  These were offices of the comfortless type to be found in small towns.Bare floors, stained with tobacco juice and the dust of the street.Bare desks and tables, some of them unpainted, homemade affairs, allof them cheap and old. A stove in the larger office, a fewwooden-seated armchairs. Starr took in the details with a flick hereand there of his flashlight that he kept carefully turned away from thegreen-shaded windows.

  News items, used and unused, he found impaled on desk files. Bills paidand unpaid he found also. But in the first search he found nothingelse, nothing that might not be found in any third-rate newspaperestablishment. He stood in the middle room--there were three in a row,with an empty, loft-like room behind--and considered where else hecould search.

  He went again to a closet that had been built in with boards behind thechimney. At first glance this held nothing but decrepit brooms, abattered spittoon, and a small pile of greasewood cut to fit the heaterin the larger room; but Starr went in and flashed his light around thewall. He found a door at the farther end, and he knew it for a dooronly when he passed his hands over the wall and felt it yield. Hepushed it open and went into another room evidently built across oneend of the loft, a room cunningly concealed and therefore a room likelyto hold secrets. />
  He hitched his gun forward a little, pushed the door shut behind him, andbegan to search that room. Here, as in the outer offices, the firstsuperficial examination revealed nothing out of the way. But Starr didnot go at things superficially. First the desk came under close scrutiny.There were no letters; they were too cautious for that, evidently. Helooked in the little stove that stood near the wall where the chimneywent up in the closet, and saw that the ashes consisted mostly of charredpaper. But the last ones deposited therein had not yet been lighted, or,more exactly, they had been lighted hastily and had not burned exceptaround the edges. He lifted out the one on top and the one beneath it.They were two sheets of copy paper scribbled closely in pencil. The firstwas entitled, with heavy underscoring that signified capitals, "Souls inBondage." This sounded interesting, and Starr put the papers in hispocket. The others were envelopes addressed to _Las Nuevas_; there was nomore than a handful of papers in all.

  In a drawer of the desk, which he opened with a skeleton key, he foundmany small leaflets printed in Mexican. Since they were headed ALMAS DECAUTIVERO, he took one and hoped that it would not be missed. There wereother piles of leaflets in other drawers, and he helped himself to asample of each, and relocked the drawers carefully. But search as hemight, he could find nothing that identified any individual, or evenpointed to any individual as being concerned in this propaganda work; norcould he find any mention of the Mexican Alliance.

  He went out finally, let the door swing behind him as it seemedaccustomed to do, climbed through a window to the veranda that borderedall these rooms like a jutting eyebrow, and slid down a corner post tothe street. It was close to dawn, and Starr had no wish to be found nearthe place; indeed, he had no wish to be found away from his cabin if anyone came there with the breaking of day to watch him.

  As he had left the cabin, so he returned to it. He went back to bed andlay there until sunrise, piecing together the scraps of information hehad gleaned. So far, he felt that he was ahead of the game; that he hadlearned more about the Alliance than the Alliance had learned about him.

  As soon as the light was strong enough for him to read without a lamp, hetook from his pocket the papers he had gleaned from the stove, spread outthe first and began to decipher the handwriting. And this is what hefinally made out:

  "Souls in Bondage:

  "The plundering plutocrats who suck the very life blood of your mothercountry under the guise of the development of her resources, are workingin harmony with the rich brigands north of the border to plunder youfurther, and to despoil the fair land you have helped to win from thewilderness.

  "Shall strong men be content in their slavery to the greed of others?Rise up and help us show the plunderers that we are men, not slaves. Letthis shameless persecution of your mother country cease!

  "American bandits would subjugate and annex the richest portion ofMexico. Why should not Mexico therefore reclaim her own? Why not turn thetables and annex a part of the vast territory stolen from her by theoctopus arms of our capitalist class?

  "We are a proud people and we never forget. Are we a cowardly people whowould cringe and yield when submission means infamy?

  "Awake! Strike one swift, successful blow for freedom and your bleedingmother land.

  "Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona were stolen from Mexico, justas the riches of her mines are being stolen from her to-day. Sons ofMexico, you can help her reclaim her own. Will you stand by and see herfurther despoiled? Let your voices rise in a mighty cry for justice! Letyour arms be strong to strike a blow for the right!

  "Souls in bondage, wake up and strike off your shackles! Be not slavesbut free men!

  "Texas, New Mexico and Arizona for Mexico, to whom they rightfullybelong!"

  "They sure do make it strong enough," Starr commented, feeling for amatch with which to relight his cigarette that had gone out. He laid downthe written pages and took up the leaflet entitled, "ALMAS DE CAUTIVERO."The text that followed was like the heading, simply a translation intoSpanish of the exhortation he had just read in English. But he read itthrough and noted the places where the Spanish version was even moreinflammatory than the English--which, in Starr's opinion, was going some.The other pamphlets were much the same, citing well-known instances ofthe revolution across the border which seemed to prove conclusively thatjustice was no more than a jest, and that the proletariat of Mexico wasgetting the worst of the bargain, no matter who happened to be in power.

  Starr frowned thoughtfully over the reading. To him the thing wastreason, and it was his business to help stamp it out. For the powersthat be cannot afford to tolerate the planting of such seeds ofdissatisfaction amongst the untrained minds of the masses.

  But, and Starr admitted it to himself with his mouth pulled down at thecorners, the worst of it was that under the bombast, under thevituperative utterances, the catch phrases of radicalism, there remainedthe grains of truth. Starr knew that the masses of Mexico _were_suffering, broken under the tramplings of revolution andcounter-revolution that swept back and forth from gulf to gulf. Still, itwas not his business to sift out the plump grains of truth and justice,but to keep the chaff from lighting and spreading a wildfire of seditionthrough three States.

  "'Souls in bondage' is right," he said, setting his feet to the floorand reaching for his boots. "In bondage to their own helplessness, andhelpless because they're so damned ignorant. But," he added grimly whilehe stamped his right foot into its boot, "they ain't going at it theright way. They're tryin' to tear down, when they ain't ready to buildanything on the wreck. They're right about the wrong; but they're wrongas the devil about the way to mend it. Them pamphlets will sure raisehell amongst the Mexicans, if the thing ain't stopped pronto."

  He dressed for riding, and went out and fed Rabbit before he wentthoughtfully up to the hotel for his breakfast.