Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 66/Number 3/East of Sunrise/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I.
DESERT CHIVALRY.
SEWARD was examining the two halves of a piece of “float” which he had just broken with a hammer when his eyes, wandering desertwards for a moment, glimpsed a scene which amazed and startled him. The broken stone dropped from his hands, his tall form suddenly grew tense, and he turned half about in order that he might face squarely the spectacle that was unfolding below him.
The hogback, liberally sprinkled with the white float, was lifted some forty feet above the flat, gray level to the north. Seward was standing on the crest, at the point where the stony slope pitched downward to the spot where he had made his camp. Sandy, his burro, was browsing in the mesquite that fringed the little spring at the foot of the slope. To the south and west arose the higher hills of which the hogback was a spur. Northwest, northeast, and due north the far horizon was fretted with purple peaks, surrounding the flat desert completely and making of it the bottom of a great basin, a sort of natural amphitheater. A moving drama was being enacted along the southern edge of the basin, one of those unexpected dramas with which the wastelands, now and again, do their weird conjuring.
Two minutes before the exciting scene had flashed upon his eyes, Seward would almost have made oath that he was the only human being within a dozen miles. And now what did he see? A phantasmagoria of four figures, projected by the lantern of chance in clear silhouette against the gray of the desert. Three of the figures were mounted and so distant that they were little more than moving blots; but the fourth figure, the one nearest the hogback, was afoot and running to escape the pursuing riders. The person in flight had evidently seen Sandy and was making desperate efforts to reach the burro in the plain hope of finding a camp and a refuge.
Seward made a discovery, and he made it just as a puff of white smoke arose from the pursuing horsemen, followed instantly by the dull report of a rifle and a flurry of sand shooting into the air near the runner’s feet. The person in flight was a woman. A shawl-like garment, one end released, fluttered backward from the woman’s shoulders as she lifted her arms in a mute expression of despair.
Always ready to lend a helping hand to any one in distress, Seward would have hurried to the rescue even if the fugitive had been a man, making the rescue preliminary to an investigation into the rights or wrongs of the case. Now, with the discovery that it was a woman so hard beset, his desire to give aid was redoubled.
Hurrying down the slope to his camp by the spring, he caught his revolver out of his scattered equipment and ran to meet the woman. As she came closer, he saw that she was young, that the fluttering shawl was her only head covering, and that her hair was as black and shining as a raven’s wing. Her face, tense and strained with her physical exertions, was of a warm olive tint, and her eyes were dark.
“Socorro, señor!” she cried gaspingly.
With one hand she clutched the flying rebozo convulsively about her throat, and half staggered from weakness as she reached out the other hand to Seward. He caught her as she seemed about to fall. The pursuers were drawing close, and they continued to shoot from the backs of their plunging horses. They were poor marksmen, for the bullets all went wide, wider than they should, even when fired from the lurching saddles.
There were no seconds to waste in talk. With the one word “Animo!” Seward half dragged the girl to a shelter of heaped-up boulders near the spring. There, with a rocky breastwork between them and the flying lead, they crouched and waited. Revolver in hand, Seward peered over the tops of the boulders.
“Who are you?” he asked, alertly watching the three horsemen.
“Paquita Gonzales, señor,” came the answer, breathlessly, from beside him.
“Who are those men?”
“I do not know, señor. Madre mia, they came upon me so quick! My horse threw me and ran away; so I—I had to do what I could without the caballo. Bandidos, señor—they must be!”
A closer view of the three riders lacked so much of being reassuring that the girl’s suggestion of bandits seemed close to the truth. They were not Mexicans, that was plain, but bore the earmarks of desperadoes originating north of the border. They were poorly mounted, and only two of them had rifles.
“Desert scum!” muttered Seward. “Brave enough, the three of them, to attack a lone woman. Let’s see if they are as yellow as the average of their kind.”
The three men were galloping up and down in front of the rock pile, each turn of the contracting circle bringing them nearer. Seward fired a shot. The distance was too great for accurate revolver practice, but immediately the three dug in with their heels and retreated. Seward muttered his contempt, leaped from behind his rock screen, and pushed boldly across the open, firing as he went.
It was ludicrous to see the three desert rats crowd their mounts into the breeze. Now that the señorita had found a champion they lost heart and, after firing a few volleys, they pointed their horses back along the way they had come, turning to shout a defiance which they had not the courage to follow up with aggressive action.
Seward, laughing grimly, made his way back to the rock barrier. “You may as well come out, señorita,” he said; “they’re coyotes, like most of their kind, and have made off.”
The girl arose and stood by the boulders. She was still breathing heavily, and her cheeks were flushed—a rose hue brightening the olive skin. Her eyebrows were straight and black, and her eyes were black—of the same midnight hue as her hair. The rebozo was of silk—black and yellow. A blouselike waist was caught together at her throat with a great red jewel. Her short skirt was ornamented with bright silver buttons, and she wore leggings and high-heeled shoes. About her waist was a fancy, carved leather belt from which swung a small hand bag.
She was pretty, very pretty, and Seward had an odd impression that he had seen her somewhere before. He racked his memory. Was it merely a mistaken fancy?
“You have saved my life, señor,” she said softly, leaning against the boulders and flashing her eyes upon him; “and you have saved the money”—here she struck one hand against the small bag at her belt—“which I am taking to Tia Bianca, over east of Sunrise Cañon. Gracias, mil gracias!”
Her voice, her manner, still further nagged at Seward’s memory. He was sure, by now, that he had seen the girl before.
“Haven’t I met you somewhere before?” he inquired.
“Never, señor, that I can remember,” she answered, shaking her head and unmasking a devastating smile. “I believe, if you please, that I will have a drink.”
She moved toward the spring, apparently as little concerned over her recent escape as though fleeing from desperadoes was an everyday occurrence. Seward’s long desert experience had taught him to note little things that would escape the ordinary observer. He noticed her coolness, her quick adjustment to matters as they were following on the heels of a narrowly averted tragedy. He followed her to the spring, got a tin cup from his pack, and filled it with water, all the while with a growing suspicion that something was wrong.
“I am sorry to have been so much trouble to you, señor,” she said, returning the empty cup.
He spread a blanket for her in a scrap of shade, and she seated herself tailorwise upon it. She lifted the rebozo to drape her head, and all the while her black eyes were considering gravely the man before her.
“Americano, si?” she asked.
“Si,” he answered shortly, for it was a casual question; a foolish question, with Seward’s nationality standing out so clear.
“And the name, please? I wish to know in order that I may tell Tia Bianca and Tio Juan to whom I am so very much indebted.” Her English was good and with scarcely an accent.
“Seward is the name,” he told her.
She started, her eyes widened. “Not—please tell me,” she breathed, “not Seward of Sacatone of whom we hear so many stories?”
He laughed again. “Well, yes,” he admitted; “I’m a prospector, and I was sampling the float on the hogback when you happened along. Chance, señorita!”
The girl fell into a dreamy state, a sort of waking trance in which she mused aloud. “In all these deserts,” her rippling voice flowed on, “where there are so few real men to be found, it has been my fate to be saved by Seward of Sacatone, the caballero whose fame for good deeds has gone everywhere! His courage, his kindness, his”
There was nothing pleasing to Seward in all this; it would have been distasteful even if the girl’s voice and manner had been sincere, which they were not. He had been rolling a cigarette; as he reached for a match he broke into the flowing monologue:
“Your relations live east of Sunrise Canon?” he inquired.
“Si, señor Seward,” she answered, lifting her head and her white teeth flashing a smile. “I started alone from Forty-mile to take my uncle and aunt a few hundred pesos left to them by Tio Enrico, Tio Juan’s brother, who has but recently died. Those bandidos must have known; they must have followed to rob me.”
Forty-mile! Seward had a clew.
“From Forty-mile to Sunrise Cañon, señorita,” he suggested, “is a long ride for a woman; all of sixty miles.”
“Not for a woman who knows the deserts, señor! I am at home in the deserts.”
“You live at Forty-mile?”
“I lived with Tio Enrico,” she explained; “you must have heard of him—Enrico Silva, of the Posada del Rey Niño. Now I shall have to live there with a cousin. It is one’s fate,” she said with a sigh, “when one has no padre, no madre. I suppose,” she inquired archly, “that you will take me to Tia Bianca? You are always of so great help to those who are in need.”
Here was a complication not at all to Seward’s liking. The desert is nothing if not unconventional, but Seward of Sacatone had his own high ideals. Chivalry demanded that much of him, however, and he bowed to the inevitable much as he disliked it. He flashed a look at the sun.
“You must be hungry,” he said, “and inasmuch as you are here, and we both must eat, I shall get supper. It will be rough fare,” he added.
“It will be a banquet,” she returned, “if prepared by Seward of Sacatone.”
He went grimly about his preparations; for he had suddenly placed this girl, whose home was at the Posada del Rey Niño in Forty-mile. He remembered the posada, for it had figured almost tragically in an adventure of some months past when he had helped Newton Ranee of Quinlan to save his son from a gang of sharpers. The posada housed one of the crookedest gambling layouts in the Southwest; and Paquita Gonzales had dealt faro in that nest of guile and trickery. “La Joya,” she was called, “The Jewel,” from that sparkling red stone at her throat.