The Mystery of The Barranca

The third assistant’s shoulders executed the Latin equivalent of “Search me!” At last news, peon “brakies” on the Nacional had been using it as a roller coaster on the mountain grades going down to Monterey. If Providence had intervened before it ran off into the sea Mr. Chauvez opined that it would most likely be found on that city’s wharves. All of which, after some clicking and humming of wires, culminated in the manager’s report to Seyd at four.

“It seems that your freight was switched by mistake over to Monterey. If you leave it to us” – his stern eye loosed a twinkle – “you’ll probably get it sometime in the next six months. But if you’ll take these passes for the evening train and hunt it up yourself you can have it tagged onto the train that leaves to-morrow night.”

Though the vicissitudes of thirty years’ railroading had almost petrified his heart, the organ stirred faintly as Seyd returned hearty thanks. Watching him go out, he even muttered: “It’s a damned shame! But I’ll take care that he’s bothered no more.”

More grateful on his part than he had any legal right to be, Seyd would have been better pleased had the passes read to Vera Cruz. Knowing that Francesca must pass through Mexico City on her way home, he would have preferred even to stay where he was. But the thought of Billy fretting himself thin at the mine reinforced his naturally strong sense of duty, and he took the train out that night. And his steadfastness made for his good. During his three days’ absence the flame of feeling which was consuming his resolution and blinding his thought burned itself out. The morning after he had seen his car billed through to his own station he rose with his mind clear and a renewed purpose to do the right thing.

“At the first favorable opportunity I shall tell her,” he told himself, in the coach going down to the station. With the thought strong in his mind he stepped on the train and – came face to face with Francesca herself.

“Oh! it is you!”

“I – I – thought you were already gone!”

While he blushed and stammered confusedly his senses, nevertheless, took cognizance of the fluttering rush of her hands, the happy eyes in the midst of her flushes, other things that answered, without words, several questions which had greatly perplexed him. Whatever the cause behind her long silence, it was neither the resurrection of her racial pride nor, as he had sometimes suspected, her discovery of his marriage. Indeed, her very next words gave him an inkling.

“You must have wondered why I did not write? But I – could not help it.” She glanced at her mother, who, with eloquent hands, was telegraphing him welcome from the other end of the car. “I will tell you later – all.”

In his surprise and gladness his mind still clung to his resolve, and, nearly as possible, he kept his pact with himself. “I also have something to tell.”

She looked up quickly. But his eyes indicated no diminution of the old feeling. Satisfied, she asked, with a little sigh: “The mine? Something gone wrong? You will tell us – now.”

The señora, who had caught the last sentence, added her word. “Si, for we, you know, are your friends.” Making room for him by her side, she punctuated his tale of the summer’s mishaps with pitiful exclamations, and comforted him at the end with maternal solicitude. “Si, at the first glance I saw it, that you had suffered. But, courage, amigo, it will make for your greater enjoyment in the end.”

Francesca had taken the seat opposite, and, catching her eye just then, Seyd saw, along with the sympathy and understanding, a gleam of exultation. “You suffered, si, but I’m glad for – ’twas for me.” Her glance said it plainly as words, and he ached to answer it; but, in accordance with the honest course he had laid out for himself, he refrained, and went on talking to her mother.

“Don Luis,” she answered his question, “is in the front car with Sebastien – in attendance on our dear friend, his mother.”

He knew that he had no part in their grief, and, tentatively, he began, “If I can be of any help – ”

Divining his feeling from the pause, she answered at once: “You are very kind. Francesca, poor niña, has been under a great strain. ’Twill be a mercy if you will stay here and talk.”

Now that her first blushes had died, he could see it for himself. Her smile added the soft confession, “You did not suffer alone.”

Under her look Seyd felt his resolution weaken; to save it he looked out of the window, whereupon it gained strength from the thought of his impending confession. But it relaxed again the next time their glances met; and, as love is an anarchist who scoffs alike at law and death, their communications proceeded with alternate thawings and freezings, while, in reverse order, the black lava fields and gloomy piñon gave place to the painted hamlets, pink churches, and villages of huts in green seas of corn. Yet, if a little worse for wear, his resolution held. Indeed, it found definite expression when the train stopped at last at their station.

“I must see you soon!” he said, as they went out. “I have something very serious to say.”

Once more she looked up quickly. “We shall be at El Quiss, Sebastien’s place, for three days. After that you will find me at home. But do not come alone!” The hasty addition threw more light on the causes behind her sudden departure. “As you value your life – nay, you were always careless of that – promise, for my sake, that you will not come alone? When you go out anywhere take with you at least one man.”

“Is it so serious as that?” But he stopped laughing when he saw she was hurt. “There! I promise!”

She paid him, alighting, with a clasp of her hand that left its soft clinging pressure tingling after she disappeared in the crowd of rancheros and hacendados, Sebastien’s retainers and friends, who filled the station. His sharp gray eye had already singled out his car on a side track, and while he waited for the agent Sebastien and Don Luis passed, walking behind the coffin.

He was seen, moreover, by them, and after they had mounted and were riding side by side at the head of the funeral procession Sebastien spoke. “Your gringo was at the station.”

Don Luis nodded. “Si, he came down on the train.”

After a silence Sebastien spoke again. “It seems that he has been having trouble with his freight.”

Ignoring the subtle suggestion conveyed by the accent, Don Luis laconically answered, “He is not the first.”

“But will be the last. Ernestino Chauvez, my second cousin, is in the department of freights. Yesterday he told me that, by special order, there are to be no more miscarriages of this man’s freight.”

The heavy brown mask refused even a sign. “This had better happened a year ago.”

“Then he is near the end of his rope?” Sebastien leaped to the conclusion.

“His first note of hand to me is due next month.”

“And – ”

Don Luis’s massive shoulders rose. “How should I know, amigo, what money he has?”

“But if he pay not?”

Again Don Luis shrugged. “Sebastien, how often am I to tell it – that no gringo shall force in on my lands.”

In happy ignorance as yet of the significance implied in their conversation, Seyd at that moment was reading and rereading, with incredulous joy, a newspaper clipping which had been forwarded by a friend in Albuquerque.

MRS. ROBERT SEYD, WIFE OF PROMINENTMINING ENGINEER, GRANTED DIVORCE

The content below ran as is usual when feminine enthusiasm over its wrongs has been unchecked by fear of a reply, and in handing down his decision the local Dogberry – who was unaware that the notice of the plaintiff’s remarriage would appear in the same issue with his remarks – had pronounced it the most heartless case of desertion in all his experience upon the bench. Reading a second clipping which set forth the marriage, Seyd indulged in a grin. But this quickly faded. Pity and sympathy colored his remark.

“Poor thing! I hope she’ll be happy.” Self reproach vibrated in the addition, “She was not, never could have been, with me.”

With that she passed out of his thought just as she had already gone from his life. His mind leaped to review the consequences. Free! Free! In the first flush of his joy he exulted over the fact that his intended confession was now unnecessary. But later and more sober reflections caused him to shake his head.

“No!” He laid down the law peremptorily for himself. “There’s been enough and to spare of shilly-shallying. You will go to her and tell her – all! And if she refuses you there’ll be no one to blame but yourself.”

CHAPTER XVIII

In the calendar of love days count as weeks, months as years; but, though the following week conformed to this universal law, Seyd managed to extract from its laggard hours his modicum of joy. Following the mules on two trips between the mine and station he lived in a glow of feeling, the natural reaction of his late despair. By turns relief, joy, hope governed his reflections, finally uniting in optimism that drowned his customary caution. Whereas only a week ago he had begun to plan for a trip home to California to raise money to meet their first note he now determined to put it off until he should have seen Don Luis, and then, if necessary, send Billy.

“I’ll call on him immediately after the funeral,” he said, talking it over with Billy. “If he demands his pound of flesh there’ll still be time for you to go north.”

This settled, he had gone about his business in happier mood than he had known for many a year. It seemed to him as if the tangled run of his life was beginning to unfold straight and plain. But while he worked, the evil fates which had made such a ravel in his personal skein were equally busy inventing fresh tangles. On the day that saw at once the delivery of the last piece of machinery and the arrival of the first seasonal rain Sebastien and Francesca joined battle at the El Quiss hacienda.

Until, the morning after the funeral, Sebastien called her aside to thank her for her care of his mother she had shown him only the sympathy due his sorrow. But under it resentment still smoldered, and it was fanned to a flame by his accidental expression.

“It was the kinder because I had forced you away. If I can make any return – ”

“You can.” She filled his pause. “During the last six months I had time for reflection, and the more I thought of it the more I wondered at myself for my easy yielding to your will. It is not that I was unwilling to do that or more for your mother. But to be sent away like a naughty school girl under a solemn vow against correspondence – ”

“The price of your consent, you remember, was the gringo’s life?” His eye lit with the old saturnine sparkle. “As you see, he still cumbers good Mexican earth.”

“You dared not have harmed him in any case.”

“No?”

“No.” She met without flinching his look of sarcastic interrogation. “Porfirio Diaz will not stand for the killing of Americanos. As you well know, Sebastien, he would surely have hunted you down.”

“If there had been any to tell? Even your folly would hardly have arisen to that.”

“’Twould not have been necessary. If I had warned him, placed your threat on record with his friends, ’twere sufficient. If not, there is still another argument that would have held you.”

“And that?”

“The sure knowledge that I would hate you forever.”

“Good reasons, both of them.” He shrugged. “But you overlook the fact, my cousin, that a whisper in the ear of the good uncle would have taken the matter out of my hands.”

“That would not have cleared you – with me. Now listen, Sebastien. I yielded because at the time it seemed the only way, and after I realized my folly I still lived up to my promise. But now I give you warning. Henceforth I shall not permit your interference in my affairs.”

“Your love affairs?”

“Bueno!” Looking him straight in the eye, she accepted the correction. “My love affairs.”

“It will not be necessary.”

Instead of the violent outburst she expected he stood looking at her, in his eyes a peculiar light half of pity, half vindictive. A trifle nonplussed, she returned his gaze. Perhaps, with feminine inconsistency, she was not altogether pleased by his tame acceptance, for her color rose and one small foot tapped the polished floor tiles. “I am glad you take it so reasonably.”

Again he failed with the expected outburst, and her uneasiness grew in correspondence with the pity in his glance. “You mistake me. I said it would be unnecessary. Read!”

He turned and went out, a mercy she appreciated when, after a puzzled glance at the paper he had stolen from Peters, her eye was guided by the heavy ink scorings to the article that set forth Seyd’s divorce. At first she hardly realized its import. But when she did – surely the hand that guided the pen had achieved revenge far beyond its owner’s blackest hope! Going out, Sebastien heard the paper crackle. Looking back, he saw her standing frozen, eyes wide and black in her mute white face; and, stricken with sudden pity, he softly closed the door.

But he did not go away. He knew her too well. Given her wild Irish blood plus her Spanish pride there could come but one result, and while she struggled toward it within he paced the corredor without. When at last she opened the door and came on him there he knew that he had won by the scorn that set her soft mouth in straight red lines. In the dusk of the corredor her face loomed, pale and drawn, the eyes red and swollen. But when she saw the deep pity in his stern eyes her own lost something of their hardness.

“You were always kind – and wise.” Her mouth quivering, she gave him both hands. “’Twould have made for my good had I listened to you more.”

For him it was a perilous moment. The touch of her hands aroused an intense desire to seize and comfort her with kisses. Had he given way to it she would have surely been shocked out of the resolution that had been born of her anger and shame. But the habit of years enabled him to keep the impulse under restraint. She went quietly to the end.

“I am very grateful – I would like to make some return. If we had not grown up together I should no doubt have loved you from the beginning in the way you wished, for you are closer to the man of my girlish dreams than any other I have ever known.” She smiled wanly. “He does not exist, my dream man, or, if he did, what use could he have for such a wild, naughty girl as I? So, if you still want me – ”

“Want you!” He would have drawn her to him, but she pulled back.

“Not yet! I like you, have always loved you – in a sisterly way. I must have time to change my viewpoint. Give me a month?”

“And then – ”

“If you still wish it I will be your wife.”

CHAPTER XIX

As before said, the last piece of machinery and the first rain arrived simultaneously at Santa Gertrudis. The break in the summer heat came with a south wind which herded mountainous vapors in from the warm Pacific. All night the rain fell in sheets that set the thirsty arroyos running bank-high and raised the river ten feet. Then, after the pleasant tropical fashion, the downpour ceased, and day broke with a blaze of sunlight over the Barranca.

“Sinbad’s valley of diamonds!”

It was Billy’s metaphor when he came out with Seyd from breakfast, and, trite as the comparison might be, nothing else could better describe the millions of wet jewels that flashed in the dark mantle of pine above and embroidered the green cloak of the jungle beneath. Yesterday had seen the last touches put on the aerial cable which would be soon dropping buckets of ore into the red jaws of the furnace two thousand feet below. From the edge of the plateau it ran, a streak of silver fringed with glittering rain drops, down and out to the smelter; and when, in the pride of his heart, Billy loosed the brakes the first vibration threw off a cloud of prismatic spray.

“Balanced to a hair! You see, the weight of one full bucket is sufficient to start the chain.”

“Fine!” Seyd echoed. “Runs like a clock. Another week and we’ll be running steady.”

Standing there, watching the buckets sail up and down like great iron birds, they gave themselves up to the joy of accomplishment; as once before, permitted fancy to run amuck through the golden future. And after their hard labors and prolonged anxieties a little self-congratulation was quite in order. If, one way or another, they succeeded in meeting their first note they really could be counted in splendid shape, for their shipments of copper matte would be on the market before the second fell due.

Billy nodded assent when Seyd spoke. “Francesca said they would be home to-day. I think I’ll run down there and tackle Don Luis.”

Between them were no secrets, and when Seyd rode away an hour later with Caliban at his heels Billy called after him: “And say, old man, have it out with the girl. If she has half the brains I have always allowed her she’ll easily see the accidental way in which it all came about.”

Though the advice merely restated his own intention, Seyd found it inspiring. Riding down the Barranca staircases, he whistled and sang. While following the trail through the long succession of ranchos, jungle, hamlets, he lived over again that first ride with Francesca. Very plainly he now perceived that it dated his love, that in the pauses of his stealthy study she had ensnared him with her rich personality.

“She got you then,” he mused, adding, with a burst of feeling that astonished himself, “And now I’ll get her – if I have to take her by force.”

Planning and dreaming, he rode along until the sight of the river, flowing swiftly and deep over the San Nicolas ford, broke up his reverie. Only a mile away, on the other side, the hacienda lay in full view, yet it appeared at first as if they would have to turn back. But after nosing up and down the banks Caliban presently flushed a peon and a dugout. With the horses swimming behind, they were ferried over, and rode across the tree-studded pastures, which were still clad in summer brown.

At the sight of the amber walls in their setting of low brown hills Seyd’s pulses had quickened, and, interpreting everything by his own feeling, it seemed to him that the dark women who peeped from their doorways, the swart vaqueros, and the slender girls that passed to and fro with ollas balanced ahead, all turned faces of welcome. But when at last he reined in before the shut gates of the casa he experienced a sudden, cold revulsion. Like so many eyes, the iron studs stared from the oaken face of the door, until the sudden sliding of a hatch revealed the wrinkled visage of Paulo, the Spanish administrador.

With his employer’s toleration of the gringo the administrador had no sympathy. Malice sparkled in his small brown eyes while he answered Seyd’s question. “As you see, señor, the casa is empty. The señora and the niña” – he used the family diminutive for Francesca – “are still at hacienda El Quiss. Don Luis? He has gone again to Ciudad, Mexico, to talk with Porfirio Diaz himself about the gringo dam. I do not know when he will return,” he replied, further, “nor the señora.”

His high spirits dashed to the ground, Seyd sat his horse, oppressed with heavy forebodings, for the disappointment raised vivid memories of the suddenness with which the girl had been snatched out of his life on two other occasions. Sick at heart, he refused for himself the refreshment that the house’s tradition compelled Paulo to offer, and spent the hour required for the beasts’ feeding in heavy brooding.

From this, however, he roused himself presently to a lighter mood. “After all, the week is only up to-day,” he urged. “She might easily be detained beyond her expectations.”

At first he thought of leaving a note. But, realizing the formal terms in which it would have to be couched might make an unfavorable impression, he left, instead, verbal regrets. That settled, he had time to think of Don Luis, and, being now on practical ground, came to a quick conclusion. Forgetting all about his promise not to travel alone, he sent Caliban back to the mine while he went himself straight out to the station.

On his arrival there, however – so late that he had to call Peters out of his bed – he was not a little surprised to find that nothing had been seen of Don Luis. It was, of course, easily possible that he had boarded the train at a flag station ten miles up the line that was nearer to El Quiss. But when, next evening, a thorough search of his usual haunts in Mexico City failed to yield sight or sign of Don Luis, Seyd began to grow suspicious. Suspicion developed into a certainty when on his return two days later Peters informed him that Don Luis had taken the up train that very morning.

“He came from San Nicolas, too,” Peters added. “I shouldn’t wonder if he was there all the time. Looks to me like he’s trying to dodge you.”

Intentional or not, it left Seyd in a serious plight. A second trip to Mexico City would take three days. Adding two more to get Billy away in the event of Don Luis’s refusal of further time, less than three weeks would be left of their month of grace. It was not to be thought of; and, though the afternoon rains were draping the mountains with heavy gray sheets, he rode out to the inn that night. Crossing the river early next morning, he sent Billy away at once.

“You’ll have to spend twelve hours in Mexico City anyway,” he instructed him, concerning Don Luis, “so you might as well try to find him. If you succeed, no trifling! Get his fist on a written extension. If he doesn’t come through – and I have my doubts – chase right on home to California. With the photos of the prospect and plant you ought not to have much trouble in raising enough to cover the note. And the minute you get it wire me credits on Mexico City.”

Hardly expecting it, he was not surprised when Billy wired, two days later, that he was leaving that evening for the States. Under the message Peters had scribbled, “Don Luis came in to-day on Number Nine. Go right down and see him.”

Half an hour after receipt of the message Seyd and Caliban were again on their way.

For nearly a week now it had rained heavily night and day, and here and there on the bottoms small inundations gave early warning of coming floods. Though the river still ran in its banks opposite San Nicolas, the dugout in which they crossed was swept with the swimming horses half a mile downstream before they made a landing, and it was easily to be seen that another week’s rain would cut off travel on that side of the stream.

Riding in to the great square, Seyd’s pulses beat a lively accompaniment to the thought: “It is now the end of the second week. She is sure to be home.” Yet in the moment of its riotous birth the hope gave place to black misgivings at the sight of the shut house.

His spirits touched zero when the sliding hatch left Paulo’s wrinkled visage framed again in the blank oaken face of the door. “Don Luis is still in Mexico, señor.” He anticipated Seyd’s question.

“But he returned – was seen the day before yesterday at the station.”

“At the station, señor? How could that be?” His brown beads of eyes blinked in uneasy surprise; then in an instant the wrinkled mask fell into an expression of simple cunning. “Or, if so, then it must be that he has gone to join the señora and the niña, who are still at El Quiss.”

She was not there! For the third time he found himself confronted by silence, mysterious and complete as that which had attended her previous disappearances. But, though oppressed by a weight of care, he tried to hide his bitter disappointment from the administrador’s inquisition. Once again he spent a black hour while the beasts were feeding. His broodings, riding homeward, shed no light on the enigma. A night of dark thought left him baffled, furious, in good fettle for the news that Caliban gleaned from a passing charcoal-burner.

“Don Luis must have been there, señor, for Benito saw him ride forth this morning. He has gone north to see for himself the gringo dam.”

“Oh, he has, has he!” Seyd ground the words out between his teeth. “The old fox! But now I’ll chase him into his earth.”

In this, however, he had forgotten to allow for the rains which, driving down the Barranca in great wet sheets, caused Don Luis to put in at El Quiss, there to wait in the leisurely fashion of the country until the weather should break and Sebastien have time to accompany him. Arriving at the power plant after two days’ wallowing on jungle trails, Seyd found himself foiled once more in their little game of hide and seek.