Days of '49/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
1
By the end of November all the emigrants of the Carson River Route had been pushed through. Most of them reached Sacramento, many camped under the oaks near the town, expecting to winter under such scraps of canvas as they could find.
At Sacramento Hales and Burton bought a wagon and mules, put the Taylors into it and set out toward El Crucifijo. There were plenty of buildings on the ranch, it was conveniently near San Francisco, and, moreover, was Hales' ranch.
Burton, in the companionship of the Taylor children, found some relief for the pain that lay in his memory. The poor little starvelings seemed to draw some of his great strength unto themselves and he usually had one or the other of them on his shoulders.
Mrs. Taylor could hardly stir from the mattress on the wagon bed. She was a very religious woman; but, as she smilingly told Hales, her idea of what angels were like had been changed. Now she knew that they were great, bearded, shaggy men, with deep voices, who sometimes swore at mules.
On the road it rained frequently but, after a rain, with the canvas pushed up, she would lie and look for hours at the rolling hills, dotted with oaks, warmed by the sun. The song of meadow larks was in the air.
2
Many camp-fires lay behind them. Then one afternoon they turned from the road that went to San Francisco and made camp by the oaks near the road that led to the rancho. Before dark they could easily have reached El Crucifijo, but it was pleasant weather and Hales thought it better to camp here while he went to the ranch and explained the situation to Miss Tesla.
Hales unsaddled, unharnessed and picketed the mules and his horse. Burton built a fire, swung the kettle above it on a pole across forked sticks, and got out the bacon for an early supper.
Hales heard horses coming. He stood up and peered toward the road. They were five men; they had left the main road and were coming toward El Crucifijo. One of them was a Spaniard. Nearly all Americans in California at that time looked like border ruffians, being bearded, roughly dressed, armed. These men were rough of mouth too. They turned from the road and came up to the wagon. There was a searching, appraising look in their eyes.
Burton stood up and glowered at the leader, who asked:
"Why are you fellers campin' here?"
"Why shouldn't we camp here?" said Hales, stepping from beside the wagon.
The leader looked at him carefully. The other horsemen stared about; and there was that in their eyes which made Hales feel they were looking to see if anything was in sight that they thought worth stealing.
"Well, you're off the road to 'Frisco," said the leader.
"Yes," said Burton, "an' we'll likely stay off it long as we want to."
"You fellers don't 'pear to be very damn sociable!"
"Not very," Burton agreed sullenly.
The Spaniard was on a de Sola horse, and Hales eyed the man.
"Come on, Ed," one of the gang called to the leader. "We want o' hurry an' git thar."
"Yeah," said another, "we gotta hang that feller afore sundown."
"Who," asked Burton, with an echo of pain in his voice, "you goin' to hang?"
Ed, the leader, grinned.
"A damn thief that what we we know where to catch. We'll make a crucerfix outta that feller." He was was evidently a little hazy on the significance of a crucifix. Then—"You fellers from the mines, ain't you?"
"Emigrant wagon," said Hales, scenting thievery in the question.
"But he's a miner"—pointing at Burton.
"Any luck, pard?" a voice inquired at once.
"What," said Hales in Spanish, "are you rascals about?"
The Spaniard gave a start. He appeared a glum villainous fellow, but answered readily:
"The Americanos look for a thief, señor. They ride to El Crucifijo."
"Here, what you sayin'?" demanded Ed. "Talk plain English, by!"
"Why do you go to El Crucifijo?" asked Hales.
"None o' yore damn bus'ness, " said Ed. "We gotta be gittin' along. Come on, boys!"
He gave a yell, reined back his horse, wheeled about and rode off furiously, the others with him, and now and then they sent up a wild yell.
"There," said Hales, "is a mess of scoundrels. They are up to something. I'll saddle up and go now to the ranch."
"I'm comin', too," said Burton. He turned toward Taylor. "There won't be no danger, only take that loaded rifle an' use it if any o' them fellows come back here." Burton then looked through the end of the wagon: "You won't be afraid, ma'am?"
"No," said Mrs. Taylor, "I shall never in my life be afraid again. "
She had passed through cholera on the plains, thirst in the desert, starvation in the mountains; in her weakened body nothing was left but courage and faith.
3
At El Crucifijo the shaggy- headed Ferdinand listened with patience and in mild stubbornness offered gentle answers to Kredra's urging that he be up and about the duty of his long sworn oath.
When Martin O'Day's letter had, after an entanglement of delays, reached Ilona she read it with a mingling of half-sobs and laughter, told what was in it to Kredra, and Kredra had at once taken Ferdinand aside.
"Go! He is there, that Dawez—there from where the letter came. Go!"
From that day Ferdinand had no peace, though he might ask:
"But who will stay and watch over the one we love? And you? Who will stay to guard if bad luck it should try to come to El Crucifijo? That turnip, Pedro?"
"God, who has sent word, will watch. Go! Go quickly! God does not twice aid one who sleeps when the Oath is sworn!"
Ferdinand was still a good Basque, but his oath, impetuously sworn, did not mean so much now as before he had wandered for twenty years and more among men who had scant faith in any oath.
"Wisest of Women," he protested, "some one must remain here."
"Go!" Kredra insisted angrily. "He has the luck of evil men, and will escape you!"
"The knife will find him. Ho, be patient, Kredra, Wise Woman, and listen now, I will play you a habañera"
"Twanger of strings and tongue! Idler! Fool! You throw away what God has sent. Punishment will fall upon you! Go! In the midst of a thousand camps you are told where to find him, and you doze with song on your mouth! Up! Go!"
"God who knows all things will not be angry," said Ferdinand complacently.
So, almost every day Kredra spoke and Ferdinand answered.
This day, as they talked in the afternoon shadows of a crumbling building, Ferdinand sat upon a bench with legs crossed, guitar in his lap and strummed absently.
"Who idles when the Oath is sworn, dies!" said Kredra, who had kept the faith of her fathers.
"True, true, Woman of Wisdom. But I do not idle. I stand guard!"
"E-ah, fool! Fool to think to turn aside the Wrath with idle words! Evil gnaw you!"
"Evil, evil, evil—always the word is on your tongue. You do not laugh. You do not sing. I play, you frown, Woman of Shadows, but—now who comes?"
Ferdinand tossed the guitar across his back and with a full-chested swagger went round the corner into view of the horsemen he had heard coming on the road.
At a glance he saw they were strangers, excepting one Gomez, a thief, with whom he had had some slight companionship in an affair or two of gold hunting.
The others were Americans, and did not have the faces of men he would willingly invite to a table.
"Ho-o-a-ho," he shouted heartily, but with doubtful rapid glances from one to another, "what saints bring you?"
"That him?" a horseman called at Gomez.
"Si!" said Gomez.
With a rush the Americans spurred at Ferdinand. He stepped back quickly. Revolvers were drawn, pointed at his head. The horsemen encircled him.
"The devil eat you uncooked!" said Ferdinand in Spanish to Gomez. Then with a look of bewildered innocence gazed from one to another of those who aimed at his head, and spoke softly—"Señors, what wrong is it I have done you? Point to the ground! It has no head, the ground, an' your fingers shake. Ho-oh, you think Ferdinand is some other man!" He laughed.
"We'll make you laugh from t'other side o' that big mouth o' yourn!" said one; and another asked of Gomez again—"This is him?"
"Si, señor. Eet is Ferdinand!"
"Twice you have lied!" Ferdinand answered, and a gleam of fury crossed his black eyes.
"Ah," Gomez told him with a sort of sour triumph, "the Doña Elvira Elvira has sent us!"
"The good God help me me!" he answered humbly, but at once with a brush of his hand he pushed his his hat from his head.
He tossed his head, shaking the tangled curly hair, looking upwards at the faces of the men on horseback as his thoughts scattered in all directions, looking for some trick to fool these men. But he was hemmed in on all sides.
Kredra, like the leader of a tragic chorus, from afar shouted at him:
"Faithless to your Oath, it has come!"
She stood apart, looking upon these men darkly.
Ferdinand swung his guitar before him.
"It is a joke," he said, laughing, "but you are not any leetle less welcome. Ho, an' now I sing!"
The men were surprised, interested, doubtful, for Ferdinand strummed, and as he danced his fingers over the strings he improvised a chant, giving his warning to Kredra:
"Take the One we love and flee,
Let them not see
Let her not be seen—Go!
The good Doña's evil hand
Strikes at Ferdinand—
Go!
Let her not be seen
Lest these devils mean
Harm to her! God's wrath
May hate me for the Oath he hath
Heard me forswear by idleness—Go!
Pray, pray me from this Doña's trap
And what may come or what may hap
I swear anew the Oath to keep
Without rest and without sleep
Go!"
"Here, stop that!" shouted Ed Brent, the leader. "This ain't no time for singin'."
"Ho, I give you the song of welcome though you are stranger-men. What it is that Ferdinand can do you would like, eh?"
"We're goin' t' hang you in 'bout two shakes of a sheep's tail. But first you tell us whar that gold is you stole!"
"Me, steal!"
"You, yeah. This is the feller, ain't it?"
"Si, señor!"
"Thrice you have lied!" said Ferdinand in Spanish.
"Cough up that gold. Whar's it hid?"
"What gol', señors?"
"That gold you stole from miners. We know all about you, you !" Curses followed.
"Ah, señors"—reproachfully—"you beleeve liar-men!"
"Huh-huh," said Ed Brent, with a kind of amused snort, "it was a woman that put us on to you!"
"An' does nevare a woman lie, señor? Ho, Ferdinand is no thief. He is an hones' man an' sing songs!"
"String him up!" said one of the horsemen.
"Dig up that gold, you!"
"But, señors, I have no gol. Hones'!"
"Put a rope on him. Then he'll talk, I bet you!"
"We'll let you off if you dig up the gold," said Ed Brent.
"Ah, that I had gol'! But Ferdinand is poor, being an hones' man!"
"Say, who's that woman?" one of them asked, pointing to where Kredra had stood. Now she had disappeared.
"Oh," said Ferdinand carelessly, "jus' a woman an' works."
"Who is she?" Gomez was asked.
"I do not know, señors."
"How many folks are there around here?" Brent demanded of Ferdinand.
"Not manee—ten or twelve, señors."
"Say, Ed," said a fellow a little uneasily, "maybe we'd better take a look around?"
"Look, hell! He's a greaser, ain't he? Thief, ain't he? We got the right to hang greaser-thiefs, ain't we?" To Ferdinand: "See that there tree?" Brent pointed to the rough oak that gave the rancho its name. "If you don't dig up that gold, an' be in a of a hurry about it, you swing, an' high!"
Ferdinand knew that the longer he kept these men expecting to get gold from him the longer he would live; and that the good Doña, who never forgave a man, had put these men upon him because of his faithlessness to her, because he had turned bodyguard to a girl that she regarded as a rival.
"You an' Gomez here, an' others," said Brent, "you stole from Americans. We're goin' to have it!"
"He says that?" Ferdinand pointed at Gomez. "Ah- ho! He has fool you with lies. Because he is a thief, am I?"
"There's somebody else as says it, too, an' he"—Brent pointed also to Gomez—"he's a friend of hern."
"Friend? How know you her?" Ferdinand rattled in Spanish. "Where did you meet? How? Why? You rode with Don Gil Diego who is my friend! For this he will put you alive on coals!"
Gomez shrugged his shoulders and set about rolling a cigaret as he replied:
"If the dead can speak you may tell Don Gil."
"Say, Ed, stretch his neck a bit an' stop that greaser-talk. Make him talk good plain American."
"All right," said Brent. "Tie him up. We're goin' 'o hang you, greaser, if you don't dig up that gold!"
"Hang heem firs', señors"—he pointed at Gomez—"then I will give you gol?!"
Gomez tossed aside his cigaret and said quietly:
"You hear, señors. He has the gold. Make heem give it up."
"All right, we'll just stretch that neck o' yourn a little, Ferdy!"
Two men dismounted. Another rode closer and held a gun within a foot of Ferdinand's head while the two men tied his hands and slipped a noose over his head.
"How much gol', señors, would it take to make you b'leeve me an' hones' man?"
"Ho," said Brent, "now you're talkin '. All you've got!"
Ferdinand's guitar dangled from his shoulder by the strap on which it was slung. His hands were tied.
"Señors, I have been to the mines. I sang an' played an' men they dance" He shuffled his feet to illustrate, and with the motion of his body jerked and wrenched at the rope on his wrist. His head bubbled with tricky thought. If he could get his hands free, toss off the noose, jump to the saddle of one of the men that had dismounted—! Being near death did not discourage him. And Kredra, woman of dark wisdom, had warned him that punishment would come if he forgot his oath. But even now he had too much faith in himself to be really afraid. "Señors, I have a leetle gol'. By makin 'men merry I got it. If it will buy my neck from this slim maiden rope, it is yours."
"Tell us whar?"
"It is not much, señors. Hones' men are poor. But"
"Well, I'll be damned," said one of the men. "If he ain't got his hand loose! Jake, you done a fine job o' tyin'"
"The blankety blank!"
They tied his wrists again, winding them tightly; and the chance of again working them loose undetected was gone, for one of the men stood behind him and kept an eye upon the knots.
Ferdinand pitched his voice to a deep-throated eerie anger and said:
"Dead men live a long long time, señors. I will ride on the air an' finger your throats, A-ho! an' seeng words you think it is the wind that whispers to make the blood freeze. Oh-oh oh, think well before you hang Ferdinand, an' make of him a ghost!"
He had known such words to make uneasy men of other races, and Gomez now had an uneasy stare, but the hard-headed scoundrelism of Brent and his men hardly understood of what Ferdinand talked.
"Talk don't worry us none," said Ed Brent. "Stretch his neck a little—'less he's ready to talk sense."
"With a knot at my throat I speak not easily, señors!"
"Draw it tighter, Cliff!"
Cliff jerked. Ferdinand staggered, caught himself, coughed, shook his head, glared.
Ferdinand knew very well that these men did not mean really to hang him as long as they hoped to get him to give them gold, though now Ed Brent said:
"Pitch the rope over that there tree an' give 'er a yank, Cliff."
Ferdinand, with hands bound and led by a man on horse back, moved toward the tree; two men followed afoot, leading their horses.
When they came under the tree, crudely like a cross, the man Cliff rose in his stirrups, tossed the end of the rope over a limb, then caught it and took a turn around the saddle horn.
"That's it!" said Brent. "Now lift him off the ground a wee mite!"
"Señors!" cried Ferdinand.
But they wanted to show him that they meant business. Cliff rode forward a few steps. The rope tautened. Ferdinand was jerked forward, came to his toes, lost his balance, fell, dangled for a moment. Then Cliff reined back.
"Now we'll see if he'll talk," said Brent.
Ferdinand did not talk. His feet touched the ground, but his legs were limber. His knees slacked. As the rope was eased, he sank as if lifeless, nearer and nearer the ground, and lay motionless.
"," said Cliff, "his neck must a broke like a pipe stem!"
"Cliff, you must a jerked!"
"I never! I eased him up slow."
"Loosen up that noose," said Brent.
The noose was slackened. Ferdinand, in spite of wish and will, coughed.
"Possumin'!" cried Brent, half admiringly. "Now you talk!"
No answer. Ferdinand coughed and gasped; having failed to play dead, he was, as the next best thing, playing half-dead.
"String 'im up again," said Brent. "He's just possumin'!"
4
Near them a voice spoke, sharp, clear, indignant; a woman's,
"Take that rope from Ferdinand! Leave this rancho! Oh, you beasts of men!"
She was a young woman, strangely unlike any of the women they knew. She was tall, straight, her head was bare, her eyes were steady, and in her eyes was an almost golden gleam. She looked at them angrily and unafraid, and had come unnoticed to within a few yards, then spoke.
Near her side, slightly behind her, was the dark woman, sullen of feature, sibylline, standing as if about to pronounce a malediction.
"Well, I'll be damned!" said Brent, reining about, staring. "Whar did you come from?"
"This is my land, my rancho, my home! You men leave it, and now!"
Ferdinand got to his knees, and from knees to feet. As he arose he shouted hoarsely at Ilona:
"Back! Away! These men are robber-men! You, Kredra the Faithless"
"As well hold the wind with words!" Kredra answered. She had done all that she could do to check Ilona, and Ilona had come.
"If you men are thieves," said Ilona scornfully, "take what there is go through the house. Be quick—that you may the sooner leave!"
"Lady," Ed Brent answered, grinning, gallantly, not with menace, "if we took what we wanted, it'd be you!"
Hearing that, Ferdinand cursed and struggled, swore hoarsely, mingling all the oaths that nearly thirty years of world-wandering had brought to his tongue. He writhed, jerking powerfully. The guitar dangled and thumped like a dead thing about his neck. But bound at the wrists, with a noose on his neck, he was helpless. His breath made a sharp sound between his teeth. Foam and blood appeared on his mouth.
"Stretch him up a little, Cliff. Stop that racket while I talk some more to this here lady!"
Ilona started forward.
"No, you don't!" said Ed Brent, spurring his horse before her.
Cliff rode forward, with his head turned back watchfully. Ferdinand's oaths were strangled.
"Whoa, back a mite," said Cliff to his horse, and he reined back until Ferdinand's feet were barely on the ground, his neck awry, twisted by the pull of the rope. He could hardly breathe.
Brent's horse was before Ilona. She could not see Ferdinand. She looked up at Brent.
"My, yore purty!" he said. He said it honestly. There was no honesty, and but little, if any, decency in Brent, but at that moment he had no thought of violence toward Ilona. She was strange, unlike any woman he had ever seen.
"I have jewels. Go into my house. Take them. Leave!"
"Whar'd you come from anyhow?"
Her head came up with a gathering of angry scorn. This man might rob her, but she would not hold conversation with him.
"Take what you will, and go!"
"We're goin' hang this here feller," said Ed Brent, grinning a little. "That is, 'less you specially want him saved. I'd do most any ol' thing for you!"
It was Kredra that answered, and Brent glanced toward her. He did not understand her words, but the tone, the look, the fluency of harsh sounds had something eerie in them that reached to even his coarse consciousness. Ilona, who did understand, shuddered, but she did not reproach Kredra for her terrible curse laid upon this man.
"Hey, Ed! Here comes them two fellers!" Cliff shouted.
Brent glanced over his shoulder, pulled his horse. Every one looked toward where Cliff had pointed. Two mounted men were coming at a gallop.
Brent swore, pushed his his horse into the road, pulled his hat down, and waited, frowning. Cliff with rope to saddle horn was just behind him. The others of the gang stared, motionless.
Ilona had turned, peering hopefully. Then in the midst of silence, Kredra spoke sharply:
"E-ah! It is the man!"
Hales rode in the lead. Twenty feet before Brent he drew rein, and stopped abruptly. Already he had seen Ilona, Kredra, Ferdinand so nearly off the ground as to appear dangling.
"What's up here!" said Hales, not asking a question, but giving a challenge.
"We hang a thief!" said Brent.
"He lies! They are robber-men!" cried Kredra.
"Is this true?" Hales did not look toward her, but Ilona knew that he spoke to her. She answered:
"It is true!"
There was no more of a warning than that; Brent's hand rested on the handle of his revolver, but it was not clear of the holster before Hales shot him.
Brent sagged backward in the saddle; his hands came up with a wavering groping; he reeled to one side, hung poised for a moment by the convulsive balancing of muscles trained to the saddle, then toppled and with sliding movement pitched head first to the ground. His horse swung about, shying, but did not leave the road.
Gomez, with whom the Doña Elvira had had bargained for Ferdinand's neck, was not a man to stand and fight; he wheeled and rode off as fast as spurs and lash could speed his horse. horse. The two men on foot ran for their horses; and one, hit by a shot from Burton, rode off reeling and cursing; the other fired as he fled, but his aim was harmless.
The fellow known as Cliff had instantly drawn his gun, struck his horse with spurs, but he forgot the rope fast to his saddle horn. As he reached to shoot behind him he struck his arm against the tautened rope. His gun went off aimlessly. In spurring he jerked Ferdinand off the ground, swayed him high into the air. Cliff reined up, drew a bowie knife, and as the horse plunged about he hacked at the rope; and when the rope was cut, Hales shot him out of the saddle.
The excited horse, galloping wildly with stirrups flapping, raced after the other two men of Brent's gang who had flung themselves into their saddles and made off.
Burton, with a haste almost like falling, got from his mule, ran to Ferdinand, crouched, pulled loose the noose and with a gesture of anger flung it aside. The rope slid from across the limp form and fell into curves and coils like a long sinister serpent suddenly slain.
Kredra, Ilona, Hales, all crouched at the side of the body, all afraid of death, each hesitating to speak. The guitar was broken. Burton pulled it loose, threw it aside. Hales opened the shirt, put his ear to the broad breast, listened, heard nothing.
"Get whisky—water—anything!" he said.
A loud shrill wail went up. Little Pedro, who had come from cover now that danger was over, howled. He loved Ferdinand; and, after all, Pedro might have said truthfully that it was not his fault if the good God had not made him brave enough to fight odds when the man he loved was in peril. But he said nothing of the sort. Instead he faced in the direction of the men who had fled, brandished his fists, dared them to come back—then broke into wails as he again looked down upon his friend.
"Come," said Hales to Burton, "into the house with him—it is getting dark—with a neck like that, so thick—he isn't dead!"
Ferdinand was heavy, but Burton was powerful, Hales strong. They lifted him. Kredra hurried ahead. Ilona took one of Ferdinand's dangling hands between her own, pressed it, held it as if trying to warm it back to life.
Inside the house she showed the way into her own room, now darkened by the coming of twilight. She held aside the hide across the doorway.
They put him on the broad low bed, and as they laid him down the unconscious body gave a gasping choking sigh.
Then Kredra entered with a bottle of whisky. Ilona turned to a candle, lighted it, held it over the bed.
"His fool's heart is wiser now," said Kredra, woman of dark wisdom, and no one knew of what she was talking.
5
There were two candles on the table, the broad heavy table, around which families had crowded at times of feast; and between these candles Ilona and Hales faced each other.
Hales had no more than begun to explain who the Taylors were, and his wish that they might rest in more peace and comfort than was possible in a city, when instantly Ilona said:
"Bring them here to my rancho and"
Said Hales when she had finished: "I didn't know—this is your ranch now?"
"Without saying a word of what he meant to do, Colonel Nevinson deeded the ranch over to me. And Judge Deering, though I tell him the colonel simply must accept payment, looks at me in the queerest way and says, 'Be patient, Miss Tesla. In this most complicated world there are many ravels and tangles. Be patient and I am sure all will come out well.' I haven't the slightest idea of what he means."
"Uhn," said Hales and rolled, very carefully, a new cigaret.
Then Ferdinand came to the doorway, bulking large in the gloom
"Well, my friends, Ah-o," he said, not so loudly as usual, but with spirit and the twisted lip of a noiseless laugh. "My guitar it is broke. My neck it has a kink. My arms here"—he held them out—"where my hands grow to them, they are raw. But I am fine. Yes! Señor Death he is a tiger-cat an' Ferdinand a mouse-thing. You the great good Señor Hales! Kredra has tol' me"
Behind him stood Kredra, motionless, with a tragic fateful steadiness in her black eyes.
Ferdinand came forward, not weakly, but with a kind of rheumatic carefulness. His neck was warped, but since he had life he was cheerful. He had barely escaped the squeezing of Death's fingers, but one who had lived a long life was likely to have many such escapes.
Ilona soon left them. Burton had returned to the Taylors' camp; Hales was remaining the night on the bare chance that some of Brent's gang might return. If he had gone while Ferdinand was still unconscious, the women would have been alone except for little Pedro who, unless avenging a personal insult, had no more courage than a rabbit.
"My throat," said Ferdinand, feeling of it with both hands, "is all pain as if I had eat splinters. An' you see how I talk with squeaky voice, as if each leetle word is a rat an' I drag him out by the tail."
His neck was twisted, and across the table from Hales where Ilona had been sitting, Ferdinand had to sit sidewise to look straight at Hales; but his eyes were straight and steady as he spoke.
"You bring"—he spoke Spanish—"your friends to our rancho? Ah, that is good, good. An' do you stay, too? You come and go maybe? Come much and go but little, señor! Tomorrow I go from here. When I come again I do not know. As many days as that"—he raised the fingers of both hands—"or as that" He opened and closed his hands rapidly. "I do not know. And you will stay, señor? I have seen that where you are no harm can come. Today you saw! Err-ah! The robber-man he said to her, the little one, 'It is you I want!' Señor, I do not remember one thing from then till I awoke with my neck like this. Kredra has told me all. Kredra, who knows hidden things, is your friend, señor, and Kredra the wise woman is the friend of but few men. You she likes. The Colonel Nevinson she does not hate. I am her brother. But all other men are dogs."
"I have business in the city," said Hales. "Besides, Miss Tesla may not wish that I stay. And doesn't Colonel Nevinson come here frequently?"
Ferdinand looked at him thoughtfully and and tried tried to shake his head, but his neck was too stiff. He said:
"I remember, yes. Our colonel is not your friend. No, señor, he does not come much, for he is a man of no luck and it is said that he loses so much money that he grows poor. Fool of a man! More than ever now he loves the good Doña, and she never forgets. I know her, señor. The devil himself knows her not better than Ferdinand. But Ferdinand can never lift his hand against her, not though—though" he paused. He was instinctively secretive and seldom told anything. But, with resolution, he explained:
"She took Ferdinand once from men who would have squeezed his neck. Today she gave him back to such men. It was his debt to her. The debt is paid. But whom Ferdinand has loved he never hates, though, señor, he may stay far off and look out. Now, Señor Hales, we will talk of what you must do while I am gone"
Ferdinand talked but, secretively, did not say where he was going, or why.
6
The next morning the Taylors came to El Crucifijo. Burton drove but walked, for it cramped him to be on a wagon seat; and with the prerogative of a bearded angel he did now and then swear at the mules.
Ferdinand's neck was swollen and stiffly awry; he found words even more difficult to pull out by their tails, but he was in good spirits. Having looked carefully at Burton, at Taylor, thin, stooped, weak, but with the mark of a gentleman upon him, at Mrs. Taylor, who could not as yet even walk, at the children, Ferdinand was satisfied and put them into the quarters, some distance from the ranch house, that had formerly been used by the Castros, whom Ferdinand had driven from El Crucifijo in the days when he did not want honest people about.
Ferdinand rode off before noon of that day, and none but Kredra knew what was this matter of great importance that, as he said, took him to the mines.
Christmas was just two days away. They would not have known if Ilona had not told them. Hales, that afternoon, rode into San Francisco to tell John Taylor and Anna that their brother was at El Crucifijo.