An inquiry at the coroner’s office developed the fact that there were no records reaching back beyond nineteen hundred and eight and the official could not even tell who had had the office in nineteen hundred.
De Launay, who had expected little success, made a few more inquiries but developed nothing. There were few in the town who had lived there that long, and while nearly all had heard something or other of the murdered Basque and his lost mine, they set it down to legend and shrugged their shoulders skeptically. The affairs of those who lived north of the Esmeraldas were not of great concern to the inhabitants of Maryville at any time and especially since the Falls had grown and outshadowed the place. All business of the country now went that way and none came over the barrier to this sleepy little place. In actual population it had fallen off.
Seeking for signs of the old general store that he recalled he found on its site a new and neat hardware establishment, well stocked with agricultural implements, automobile parts, weapons, and household goods. He wandered in, but his inquiry met the response that the original proprietor had long retired and was now living on a ranch south of the railroad. De Launay looked over the stock of weapons and asked to see an automatic pistol. The clerk laid an army model forty-five on the counter and beside it another of somewhat similar appearance but some distinct differences.
“A Mauser,” he explained. “Lot of them come in since the war and it’s a good gun.”
“Eight millimeter!” said De Launay, idly picking up the familiar pistol. “It’s a good gun but the ball’s too light to stop a man right. And the shells are an odd size. Might have some difficulty getting ammunition for it out here.”
“None around here,” said the clerk. “Plenty of those guns in the country. Most every store stocks all sizes nowadays. It ain’t like it used to be when every one shot a thirty, a thirty-eight, a forty-five-seventy, or a forty-five-ninety. Nowadays they use ’em all, Ross & Saugge, Remingtons, Springfields, Colts; and the shells run all the way from seven millimeter up through twenty-fives, eight millimeter, thirty, .303, thirty-two, thirty-five, thirty-eight and so on. You can get shells to fit that gun anywhere you go.”
“Times have changed then,” said De Launay, idly. “I can remember when you couldn’t introduce a new gun with an odd caliber because a man couldn’t afford to take a chance on being unable to get the shells to fit it. Still, I’ll stick to the Colt. Let me have this and a couple of boxes of shells. And a left-hand holster,” he added.
There was nothing to keep him longer in the town since he saw no further prospect of getting any news, and his agreement to meet Solange necessitated his heading into the mountains if he were to be there on time. So, at the earliest moment, he got his packs on and started out of town, intending to cross the range from the south and come down into the cañon. The weather was showing signs of breaking, and if the snow should set in there might be difficulty in finding the girl.
That evening he camped in the southern foothills of the range just off the trail that mounted to the divide and plunged again down into Shoestring Cañon. Next day he resumed his ride and climbed steadily into the gloomy forests that covered the slopes, sensing the snow that hovered behind the mists on the peaks and wondering if Solange would plunge into it or turn back. He rather judged of her that a little thing like snow would not keep her from her objective.
But while the snow held off on this side of the mountains he knew that it might well have been falling for a day or two on the other side. When he came higher he found that he had plunged into it, lying thick on the ground, swirling in gusts and falling steadily. He did not stop for this but urged his horses steadily on until he had come to the windswept and comparatively clear divide and headed downward toward the cañon.
* * *
CHAPTER XIII
AT WALLACE’S RANCH
The efficient Sucatash reported back to Solange the details of De Launay’s escape, making them characteristically brief and colorful. Then, with the effective aid of MacKay, he set out to prepare for the expedition in search of the mine.
Neither Sucatash nor Dave actually had any real conviction that Solange would venture into the Esmeraldas at this time of year to look for a mine whose very existence they doubted as being legendary. Yet neither tried to dissuade her from the rash adventure—as yet. In this attitude they were each governed by like feelings. Both of them were curious and sentimental. Each secretly wondered what the slender, rather silent young woman looked like, and each was beginning to imagine that the veil hid some extreme loveliness. Each felt himself handicapped in the unwonted atmosphere of the town and each imagined that, once he got on his own preserves, he would show to much better advantage in her eyes.
Sucatash was quite confident that, once they got Solange at his father’s ranch, they would be able to persuade her to stay there for the winter. Dave also had about the same idea. Each reasoned that, in an indeterminate stay at the ranch, she would certainly, in time, show her countenance. Neither of them figured De Launay as anything but some assistant, more or less familiar with the West, whom she had engaged and who had been automatically eliminated by virtue of his latest escapade.
Solange, however, developed a disposition to arrange her own fate. She smiled politely when the young men gave awkward advice as to her costuming and equipment, but paid little heed to it. She allowed them to select the small portion of her camping outfit that they thought necessary at this stage, and to arrange for a car to take it and them to Wallace’s ranch. They took their saddles in the car and sent their horses out by such chance riders as happened to be going that way.
The journey to Wallace’s ranch was uneventful except for a stop at the former Brandon ranch at Twin Forks, where Solange met the Basco proprietors, and gave her cow-puncher henchmen further cause for wonder by conversing fluently with them in a language which bore no resemblance to any they had ever heard before. They noted an unusual deference which the shy mountaineers extended toward her.
There was a pause of some time while Solange visited the almost obliterated mound marking the grave of her father. But she did not pray over it or manifest any great emotion. She simply stood there for some time, lost in thought, or else mentally renewing her vow of vengeance on his murderer. Then, after discovering that the sheepmen knew nothing of consequence concerning these long-past events, she came quietly back to the car and they resumed the journey.
Finally they passed a camp fire set back from the road at some distance and the cow-punchers pointed out the figure of Banker crouched above it, apparently oblivious of them.
“What you all reckon that old horned toad is a-doin’ here?” queried Dave, from the front seat. “Dry camp, and him only three mile from the house and not more’n five from the Spring.”
“Dunno,” replied Sucatash. “Him bein’ a prospector, that a way, most likely he ain’t got the necessary sense to camp where a white man naturally would bog down.”
“But any one would know enough to camp near water,” said Solange, surprised.
“Yes’m,” agreed Sucatash, solemnly. “Any one would! But them prospectors ain’t human, that a way. They lives in the deserts so much they gets kind of wild and flighty, ma’am. Water is so scarce that they gets to regardin’ it as somethin’ onnatural and dangerous. More’n enough of it to give ’em a drink or two and water the Jennies acts on ’em all same like it does on a hydrophoby skunk. They foams at the mouth and goes mad.”
“With hydrophobia?” exclaimed the unsophisticated Solange.
“Yes’m,” said Sucatash. “Especially if it’s deep enough to cover their feet. Yuh see, ma’am, they gets in mortal terror that, if they nears enough water to wet ’em all over, some one will rack in and just forcibly afflict ’em with a bath—which ’ud sure drive one of ’em plumb loco.”
“I knows one o’ them desert rats,” said Dave, reminiscently, “what boasts a plenty about the health he enjoys. Which he sure allows he’s lived to a ripe old age—and he w
as ripe, all right. This here venerableness, he declares a whole lot, is solely and absolutely due to the ondisputable fact that he ain’t never bathed in forty-two years. And we proves him right, at that.”
“What!” cried the horrified Solange. “That his health was due to his uncleanliness? But that is absurd!”
“Which it would seem so, ma’am, but there ain’t no gettin’ round the proof. We all doubts it, just like you do. So we ups and hog ties the old natural, picks him up with a pair of tongs and dips him in the crick. Which he simply lets out one bloodcurdlin’ yell of despair and passes out immediate.”
“Mon Dieu!” said Solange, fervently. “Quels farceurs!”
“Yes’m,” they agreed, politely.
Then Solange laughed and they broke into sympathetic grins, even the solemn Sucatash showing his teeth in enjoyment as he heard her tinkling mirth with its bell-like note.
Then they forgot the squatting figure by its camp fire and drove on to the ranch.
This turned out to be a straggling adobe house, shaded by cottonwoods and built around three sides of a square. It was roomy, cool, and comfortable, with a picturesqueness all its own. To Solange, it was inviting and homelike, much more so than the rather cold luxury of hotels and Pullman staterooms. And this feeling of homeliness was enhanced when she was smilingly and cordially welcomed by a big, gray-bearded, bronzed man and a white-haired, motherly woman, the parents of young Sucatash.
The self-contained, self-reliant young woman almost broke down when Mrs. Wallace took her in charge and hurried her to her room. They seemed to know all about her and to take her arrival as an ordinary occurrence and a very welcome one. Sucatash, of course, was responsible for their knowledge, having telephoned them before they had started.
Before Solange reappeared ready for supper, Sucatash and Dave had explained all that they knew of the affair to Wallace. He was much interested but very dubious about it all.
“Of course, she’ll not be going into the mountains at this time o’ year,” he declared. “It ain’t more than a week before the snow’s bound to fly, and the Esmeraldas ain’t no place for girls in the winter time. I reckon that feller you-all helped get out o’ jail and that I planted hosses for won’t more than make it across the range before the road’s closed. I hope it wasn’t nothin’ serious he was in for, son.”
“Nothin’ but too much hooch an’ rumplin’ up a couple of cops,” said his son, casually. “Not that I wouldn’t have helped so long as he was in fer anything less than murder. The mad’mo’selle wanted him out, yuh see.”
“S’pose she naturally felt responsible fer him, that a way,” agreed Wallace. “Reckon she’s well rid o’ him, though. Don’t sound like the sort o’ man yuh’d want a young girl travelin round with. What was he like?”
“Tall, good-lookin’, foreign-appearin’ hombre. Talked pretty good range language though, and he sure could fork a hoss. Seemed to have a gnawin’ ambition to coil around all the bootleg liquor there is, though. Outside o’ that, he was all right.”
“De Launay? French name, I reckon.”
“Yeah, I reckon he’d been a soldier in the French army. Got the idea, somehow.”
“Well, he’s gone—and I reckon it’s as well. He won’t be botherin’ the little lady no more. What does she wear a veil for? Been marked any?”
Sucatash was troubled. “Don’t know, pop. Never seen her face. Ought to be a sure-enough chiquita, if it’s up to the rest of her. D’jever hear a purtier voice?”
The old man caught the note of enthusiasm. “Yuh better go slow, son,” he said, dryly. “I reckon she’s all right—but yuh don’t really know nothin’.”
“Shucks!” retorted his son, calmly. “I don’t have to know nothin’. She can run an iron on me any time she wants to. I’m lassoed, thrown an’ tied, a’ready.”
“Which yuh finds me hornin’ in before she makes any selection, yuh mottled-topped son of a gun!” Dave warmly put in. “I let’s that lady from France conceal her face, her past and any crimes she may have committed, is committin’ or be goin’ to commit, and I hereby declares myself for her forty ways from the Jack, fer anything from matrimony to murder.”
“Shucks,” said the old man, “you-all are mighty young.”
“Pop,” declared the Wallace heir, solemnly, “this here French lady is clean strain and grades high. Me and Dave may be young, but we ain’t making no mistake about her. She has hired herself a couple of hands, I’m telling you.”
Solange appeared at this moment, coming in with Mrs. Wallace, who was smiling in an evident agreement with her son. Mr. Wallace, while inclined to reserve judgment, had all the chivalry of his kind and stepped forward to greet her. But he paused a little uncertainly as he noticed that she had removed her veil. For a moment he looked at her in some astonishment, her unusual coloring affecting him as it did all those who observed it for the first time. The first glance resulted in startlement and the feeling that there was something uncanny about her, but as the deep eyes met his own and the pretty mouth smiled at him from beneath the glinting pale halo of her hair, he drew his breath in a long sigh of appreciation and admiration. His wife, looking at him with some deprecation, as though fearing an adverse judgment, smiled as his evident conquest became apparent. Standing near him the two boys stared and stared, something like awe in their ingenuous faces.
“Ma’am,” said Wallace, in his courtly manner, “we’re sure proud to welcome you. Which there ain’t many flowers out hereaways, and if there was there wouldn’t be none to touch you. It sure beats me why you ever wear a veil at all.”
Solange laughed and blushed. “Merci, monsieur! But that is exquisite! Still, it is not all that flatter me in that way. There are many who stare and point and even some who make the sign of the evil eye when they see this impossible ensemble. And the women! Mon Dieu! They ask me continually what chemist I patronize for the purpose of bleaching my hair.”
“Cats!” said Mrs. Wallace, with a sniff.
* * *
CHAPTER XIV
READY FOR ACTION
The fact that Solange ate heartily and naturally perhaps went far to overcome the feeling of diffidence that had settled on the Wallace rancheria. Perhaps it was merely that she showed herself quite human and feminine and charmingly demure. At any rate, before the meal was over, the Wallaces and Dave had recovered much of their poise and the two young men were even making awkward attempts at flirtation, much to the amusement of the girl.
Mr. Wallace, himself, although retaining a slight feeling that there was something uncanny about her, felt it overshadowed by a conviction that it would never do to permit her to go into the hills as she intended to do. He finally expressed himself to that effect.
“This here mine you’re hunting for, mad’mo’selle,” he said. “I ain’t goin’ to hold out no hopes to you, but I’ll set Dave and my son to lookin’ for it and you just stay right here with ma and me and make yourself at home.”
Solange smiled and shook her head. She habitually kept her eyes lowered, and perhaps this was the reason that, when she raised them now and then, they caught the observer unawares, with the effect of holding him startled and fascinated.
“It is kind of you, monsieur,” she said. “But I cannot stay. I am pledged to make the hunt—not only for the mine but for the man who killed my father. That is not an errand that I can delegate.”
“I’m afraid there ain’t no chance to find the man that did that,” said Wallace, kindly. “There ain’t no one knows. It might have been Louisiana, but if it was, he’s been gone these nineteen years and you’ll never find him.”
Solange smiled a little sadly and grimly. “We Basques are queer people,” she said. “We are very old. Perhaps that is why we feel things that others do not feel. It is not like the second sight I have heard that some possess. Yet it is in me here.” She laid her hand on her breast. “I feel that I will find that man—and the mine, but not so strongly. It is what you call a—a hunch,
is it not?”
Wallace shook his head dubiously, but Solange had raised her eyes and as long as he could see them he felt unable to question anything she said.
“And it is said that a murderer always returns, sooner or later, to the scene of his crime, monsieur. I will be there when he comes back.”
“But,” said Mrs. Wallace, gently, “it is not necessary for you to go yourself. Indeed, you can’t do it, my dear!”
“Why not, madame?”
“Why—why—— But, mad’mo’selle, you must realize that a young girl like you can’t wander these mountains alone—or with a set of young scamps like these boys. They’re good boys, and they wouldn’t hurt you, but people would talk.”
Solange only shrugged her shoulders. “Talk! Madame, I am not afraid of talk.”
“But, my dear, you are too lovely—too—— You must understand that you can’t do it.”
“It’d sure be dangerous,” said Wallace, emphatically. “We couldn’t allow it, nohow. Even my son here—I wouldn’t let you go with him, and he’s a good boy as they go. And there’s others you might meet in the hills.”
Solange nodded. “I understand, monsieur. But I am not afraid. Besides, am I not to meet my husband on this Shoestring Cañon where we must first go?”
Simultaneously they turned on her. “Your husband!” It was a cry of astonishment from the older people and one of mingled surprise and shock from the boys. Solange smiled and nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “Monsieur de Launay, whom you rescued from the jail. He is my husband and it is all quite proper.”
“It ain’t proper nohow,” muttered Sucatash. “That bum is her husband, Dave!”
“I don’t get this, quite,” said Wallace.
Then Solange explained, telling them of the strange bargain she had made with De Launay and something of his history. The effect of the story was to leave them more doubtful than ever, but when Wallace tried to point out that she would be taking a very long chance to trust herself to a man of De Launay’s character and reputation, she only spread her hands and laughed, declaring that she had no fear of him. He had been a soldier and a gentleman, whatever he was now.
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