Starr-of the Desert

by Bower, B M

  He had seemed confident that bail would be accepted, and he was unmistakably crestfallen when the judge, who acted under certain instructions from those above him, refused to accept bail. But Elfigo had scored, nevertheless; he had not permitted any of his friends to become identified in any manner whatsoever with his movements, and he had withheld his side of the case altogether.

  So Starr was left in the dark where he had expected to find the light he needed to direct him. He had also permitted Luis to mark himself for another murder in the Medina family. Well, Luis was a conspirator, for that matter; but he was a boy, and his judgment had not ripened. It seemed a shame that a youngster like that should be drawn into such a mess. Starr, determined to do what he could to protect Luis, had seen to it that Luis was locked up, for the purely technical reason that he was an important witness and they wanted to be sure of him; but really to protect him from the wrath of Elfigo.

  "And now," Starr's thoughts ran on, "I stand just where I stood before, except that I know a whole heap more than I wish I knew. And if the thing breaks loose before the trial, Elfigo will be in jail where he's got a cast-iron alibi. The rest of the bunch must be strong enough to go on without him, but I shore did hope they'd be stirred up some over this shooting. They'll likely get together right away, hold a meeting and make arrangements to do without Elfigo. If I knew where…"

  He lifted the other foot to remove its boot, hesitated, and set it down again. Surely the Alliance would have to adjust itself to the loss of Elfigo. They would get together, and what buzzing they did would be behind barred doors, since they had been too cunning to show themselves at the hearing; that night, probably, since they knew now that Elfigo had been bound over to the grand jury, and that he was held without bail. Where would they meet? That was what Starr wished he knew.

  He sat there rumpling his hair and studying the question. He could not fix upon any particular place, unless it was the Sommers ranch; and that was too far from town for any urgent business, and travelers to and from the place would be taking too great a risk. For he was sure there would be a dozen or more who would make up the Junta, and for so many men to be traveling in one direction would excite curiosity from any one who saw them leave town or return.

  There was another possible meeting place—the office of Las Nuevas. Starr thought of that rather hopelessly. Just as a common precaution, they would guard the doors if the Junta met there, or they would have men stationed on the stairs; that he would not be able to get up without giving the alarm he knew as well as though he had tried and failed.

  His thoughts went to that hidden, inner office where he had found the pamphlets and the writing that pointed to Helen May as one of the band. There, where there were no outside windows to betray a midnight conference by any showing of light within; where eavesdropping was absolutely impossible; where the men who met there might gain the yard by various means, since it faced on three streets, and be practically safe from observation, he became convinced would be the logical meeting place.

  To be sure, he was only guessing. He had no evidence whatever save his own reason that there would be a meeting, much less that it would be held in the secret office room of Las Nuevas. But he put on the boot he had taken off and reached for his coat. A half hour or so ought to prove him right or wrong in his deductions, and Starr would not have grudged a full night to satisfy himself on that point.

  It was late, nearly midnight, to be exact, when he slipped out to the shed, and watched from its shadow until he was sure that no one had seen him, before he let himself down through the hole in the manger to the arroyo bottom. He went hurriedly, but he was very careful not to show himself without first making sure that the way was clear.

  For that reason he escaped being seen by a tall young Mexican whom he caught sight of lounging at the corner opposite the building that held Las Nuevas. Ostensibly the fellow had merely stopped to light a cigarette, but while Starr watched him he struck three matches in succession, and immediately afterwards a shadow glided from the shelter of a plumber's shop opposite, slipped down to the gate that was always barred, and disappeared.

  Starr circled warily to the rear of the yard to see what chance there might be of getting over the wall unseen. He did not know what good it would do him to get into the yard, but he hoped that he might be lucky enough to see any one who entered the back door, which would be the logical means of ingress.

  He was standing back of the garage where he had found the cord tires, when the quiet of the night was split with the shrill, nerve-racking shriek of the fire whistle, four or five blocks away. In spite of himself, he was startled with its suddenness, and he stood tensed and waiting for the dismal hoots that would tell what ward the fire was in. One—two—three, croaked the siren like a giant hoot-owl calling in the night.

  "Third ward—down around the depot, probably," he heard a voice say guardedly on the other side of the fence. Another voice, more guarded even than the first, muttered a reply which Starr could not catch. Neither voice was recognizable, and the sentence he heard was so obvious a remark as to be practically meaningless; probably a hundred persons in town had said "Third ward," when the siren had tooted the number.

  At any rate some one was there in the yard of Las Nuevas, and it would not be wise for Starr to attempt getting over the wall. He waited therefore until he heard careful footsteps moving away; whereupon he himself stole quietly to the corner, thence down the side wall to the front of the building, so that he could look across the street to where the Mexican had revealed himself for a moment in the light of a distant street lamp.

  If the Mexican had been on watch there, he had left his post. In a minute Starr saw him hurrying down the unused side street, toward the angry glow that told where the fire had started. Too much temptation, Starr interpreted the fellow's desertion of his post; or else no more men were expected at Las Nuevas, and the outpost was no longer needed. Taking it for granted that a meeting had been called here, Starr reasoned from that assumption.

  He waited another minute or two, watching and listening. There was nothing at the front to break the quiet or spoil the air of desertion that surrounds an empty office building at midnight. He went cautiously to the rear corner and turned there to look back at the building, watchful for any stray beam of light or any movement.

  The upper story was dark as the rest of the yard and building, and Starr could almost believe that he was on the wrong track entirely, and that nothing was going on here. But he continued to stand there, loath to give up and go home with nothing accomplished.

  Close beside the building and back perhaps twenty feet from the front corner, a telephone and electric light pole stood with outstretched arms, holding aloft its faintly humming wires. Starr stood looking that way for some time before it occurred to him that there was no street light near enough to send that warm, yellow glow across the second bar from the bottom. The rest of the pole was vague and shadowy, like everything else in the immediate neighborhood. The bottom of the pole he could not see at all from where he stood, it was so dark alongside the building. But that second cross-arm was lighted as from a near-by window. Yet there was no lighted window anywhere in the place.

  Starr was puzzled. Being puzzled, he went slowly toward the pole, his face turned upward. The nearest street lamp was a full block away, and it would have lighted up the whole top of the pole evenly, if at all. At the foot of the pole Starr stood for a minute, still staring upward. Then he reached up, gripped the metal steps and began carefully to climb.

  Before he had reached the lighted cross-arm he knew that the glow must come from a skylight; and that the skylight must be the one that had saved that hidden little office room from being dark. He was no lineman, but he knew enough to be careful about the wires, so it took him several minutes to work his way to where he could straddle a crosstree that had few wires.

  Just below him and no more than twelve or fifteen feet distant was the skylight he had suspected, but before he gave that
much attention, he looked across to where the fire was sending up a column of crimson smoke and bright, eddying sparks, four blocks or so away. The man left on guard would find it difficult to tear himself away from all that excitement, Starr thought satisfiedly; though if he came back he could scarcely help seeing Starr on that lighted perch, and he would undoubtedly take a shot at him if he were any man at all and had a spark of loyalty to his fellows. For Starr's business up there could not be mistaken by the stupidest greaser in the town.

  With the fire to help his cause, Starr craned toward the building and looked down through the skylight. It had been partly raised for ventilation, which was needed in that little, inside room, especially since twelve men were foregathered there, and since every man in the lot was burning tobacco in some form.

  Sommers was there, seated at the end of a table that had been moved into the center of the room, which brought it directly under the skylight. He sat facing Starr, and he was reading something to himself while the others waited in silence until he had finished. His strong, dark face was grave, his high forehead creased with the wrinkles of deep thinking. He had a cigar in one corner of his mouth, and he was absentmindedly chewing it rather than smoking. He looked the leader, though his clothes were inclined to shabbiness and he sat slouched forward in his chair. He looked the leader, and their leader those others proclaimed him by their very silence, and by the way their faces turned toward him while they waited.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THROUGH THE OPEN SKYLIGHT

  Sommers took his cigar from his mouth and laid it carefully down upon the edge of the table, although he was plainly unconscious of the movement. He lifted his head with a little toss that threw back a heavy lock of his jet-black hair. He glanced around the table, and his eyes dominated those others hypnotically.

  "I have here," he began in the sonorous voice and the measured enunciation of the trained orator, "a letter from our esteemed—and unfortunate—comrade and fellow worker, Elfigo Apodaca. Without taking your valuable time by reading the letter through from salutation to signature, I may say briefly that its context is devoted to our cause and to the inconvenience which may be entailed because of our comrade's present incarceration, the duration of which is as yet undetermined.

  "Comrade Apodaca expresses great confidence in his ultimate release. He maintains that young Medina is essentially a traitor, and that his evidence at the preliminary hearing was given purely in the spirit of revenge. That Comrade Apodaca will be exonerated fully of the charge of murder, I myself can entertain no scintilla of doubt. We may therefore dismiss from our minds any uneasiness we may, some of us, have entertained on that score.

  "The question we are foregathered here to decide to-night is whether the date set for our public demonstration shall remain as it stands; whether we shall seek permission to postpone that date, or whether it shall be deemed expedient to set it forward to the earliest possible moment. As you all are doubtless aware, our esteemed compatriots in Mexico are ready and waiting our pleasure, like hounds straining at the leash. The work of organization on this side of the line has of necessity been slow, because of various adverse influences and a slothful desire for present ease and safety, which we have been constrained to combat. Also the accumulation of arms and ammunition in a sufficient quantity for our purpose without exciting suspicion has required much tactful manipulation.

  "But we have here assembled the trusted representatives from our twelve districts in the State, and I trust that each one of you has come prepared to furnish this Junta with the data necessary for an intelligent action upon the question we have to decide to-night. Am I right, gentlemen, in that assumption?"

  Eleven men nodded assent and looked down at the slips of paper they had produced from inner pockets and held ready in their hands.

  "Then I shall ask you, compadres, to listen carefully to the report from each district, so that you may judge the wisdom of foreshortening the interval between to-night and the date set for the uprising.

  "Each representative will give the number, in his district, of armed members of the Alliance; the amount of ammunition at hand; the number of agents secretly occupying positions of trust where they can give the most aid to the movement; the number of Spanish-Americans who, like our unfortunate neighbor, Estancio Medina, have refused thus far to come into the Alliance; the number, in his district, who may be counted upon to come in, once they see that the cause is not hopeless; who may be expected to take the purely American side, and who may be safely depended upon to remain neutral. I shall ask each of you to tell us also the extent and nature of such opposition as your district must be prepared to meet. There has been a rumor of some preparation for resistance to our movement, and we shall want to know all that you can tell us of that phase of the situation as observed in your district.

  "These seemingly unimportant details are absolutely essential, gentlemen of the Junta. For in this revolutionary movement you must bear in mind that brother will rise up against brother, as it were. You will be called upon, perchance, to slay the dearest friend of your school days; your neighbor, if so be he is allied against you when the great day comes. We must not weaken; we must keep our eyes fixed upon the ultimate good that will come out of the turmoil. But we must know! We must not make the irretrievable error of taking anything for granted. Keeping that in mind, gentlemen, we will hear first the report from Bernalillo district."

  A man at the right of Sommers unfolded his little slip of paper, cleared his throat and began, in strongly accented English, to read. The eleven who listened leaned forward, elbows on the table, and drank in the terrible figures avidly. Sommers set down the figures in columns and made notes on the pad before him, his lips pressed together in a straight line that twisted now and then with a sinister kind of satisfaction.

  "That, gentlemen, is how the Cause stands in the county that has the largest population and approximately the smallest area of any county in the State. While this report is not altogether new to me, yet I am struck anew with the great showing that has been made in that county. With the extensive yards and shops of the Santa Fe at Albuquerque seized and held by our forces, together with the junction points and—"

  Starr did not wait to hear any more, but edged hastily back to the pole and began to climb down as though a disturbed hornets' nest hung above him. The report that had so elated Sommers sent a chill down Starr's back. If one county could show so appalling an insurrectory force, what of the whole State? Yes, and the other States involved! And the thing might be turned loose at any time!

  He dropped to the ground, sending a scared glance for the watchman who had gone to the fire. He was nowhere to be seen, and Starr, running to the rear of the lot, skirted the high wall at a trot; crossed a narrow, black alley, hurried down behind the next lots to the cross street, walked as fast as he dared to the next corner, turned into the main street, and made for the nearest public telephone booth.

  He sweated there in the glass cage for a long ten minutes before he had managed to get in touch with Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, and to tell each in turn what he wanted and where they must meet him, and how many minutes they might have to do it in. He came out feeling as though he had been in there an hour, and went straight to the rendezvous he had named, which was a shed near the building of Las Nuevas, only on another street.

  They came, puffing a little and a good deal mystified. Starr, not daring to state his real business with them, had asked for men to surround and take a holdup gang. All told, there were six of them when all had arrived, and they must have been astounded at what Starr told them in a prudent undertone and speaking swiftly. They did not say anything much, but slipped away after him and came to the high wall that hid so much menace.

  "There was a hombre on guard across the street," Starr told the sheriff. "He went off to the fire, but he's liable to come back. Put a man over there in the shade of that junk shop to watch out for him and nab him before he can give the alarm. This is tickl
ish work, remember. Any Mexican in town would knife you if he knew what you're up to.

  "Johnson, you can climb the pole and pull down on 'em through the skylight, but wait till you see by their actions that they've got the tip something's wrong, and don't shoot if you can help it. Remember this is Secret Service work, and the quieter it's done, the better pleased they'll be in Washington. There can't be any hullabaloo at all. You two fellows watch the front and back gates, and the no-shooting rule goes with you, too. If there's anything else you can do, don't shoot. But it's better to fire a cannon than let a man get away. Sabe? Now, Chief, you and the sheriff can come with me, and we'll bust up the meetin' for 'em."

  He went up on the shoulder of the man who was to watch outside the rear wall, and straddled the wall for a brief reconnoiter. Evidently the Junta felt safe in their hidden little room, for no guard had been left in the yard. The back door was locked, and Starr opened it as silently as he could with his pass key. Close behind him came Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, whose name was Whittier. They had left their shoes beside the doorstep and walked in their socks, making no noise at all.

  Starr did not dare use his searchlight, but felt his way down past the press and the forms, to where the stairs went up to the second floor. On the third step from the bottom, Starr, feeling his way with his hands, touched a dozing watchman and choked him into submission before the fellow had emitted more than a sleepy grunt of surprise. They left him gagged and tied to the iron leg of some heavy piece of machinery, and went on up the stairs, treading as stealthily as a prowling cat.