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The Treasure Trail: A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine
The Treasure Trail: A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine
CHAPTER I
KIT AND THE GIRL OF THE LARK CALL
In the shade of Pedro Vijil’s little brown adobe on the Granados rancho, a horseman squatted to repair a broken cinch with strips of rawhide, while his horse–a strong dappled roan with a smutty face–stood near, the rawhide bridle over his head and the quirt trailing the ground.
The horseman’s frame of mind was evidently not of the sweetest, for to Vijil he had expressed himself in forcible Mexican–which is supposed to be Spanish and often isn’t–condemning the luck by which the cinch had gone bad at the wrong time, and as he tinkered he sang softly an old southern ditty:
Oh–oh! I’m a good old rebel,
Now that’s just what I am!
For I won’t be reconstructed
And I don’t care a damn!
He varied this musical gem occasionally by whistling the air as he punched holes and wove the rawhide thongs in and out through the spliced leather.
Once he halted in the midst of a strain and lifted his head, listening. Something like an echo of his own notes sounded very close, a mere shadow of a whistle.
Directly over his head was a window, unglazed and wooden barred. A fat brown olla, dripping moisture, almost filled the deep window sill, but the interior was all in shadow. Its one door was closed. The Vijil family was scattered around in the open, most of them under the ramada, and after a frowning moment of mystification the young fellow resumed his task, but in silence.
Then, after a still minute, more than the whisper of a whistle came to him–the subdued sweet call of a meadow lark. It was so sweet it might have been mate to any he had heard on the range that morning.
Only an instant he hesitated, then with equal care he gave the duplicate call, and held his breath to listen–not a sound came back.
“We’ve gone loco, Pardner,” he observed to the smutty-faced roan moving near him. “That jolt from the bay outlaw this morning has jingled my brain pans–we don’t hear birds call us–we only think we do.”
If he had even looked at Pardner he might have been given a sign, for the roan had lifted its head and was staring into the shadows back of the sweating olla.
“Hi, you caballero!”
The words were too clear to be mistaken, the “caballero” stared across to the only people in sight. There was Pedro Vijil sharpening an axe, while Merced, his wife, turned the creaking grindstone for him. The young olive branches of the Vijil family were having fun with a horned toad under the ramada where gourd vines twisted about an ancient grape, and red peppers hung in a gorgeous splash of color. Between that and the blue haze of the far mountains there was no sign of humanity to account for such cheery youthful Americanism as the tone suggested.
“Hi, yourself!” he retorted, “whose ghost are you?”
There was a giggle from the barred window of the adobe.
“I don’t dare say because I am not respectable just now,” replied the voice. “I fell in the ditch and have nothing on but the Sunday shirt of Pedro. I am the funniest looking thing! wish I dared ride home in it to shock them all silly.”
“Why not?” he asked, and again the girlish laugh gave him an odd thrill of comradeship.
“A good enough reason; they’d take Pat from me, and say he wasn’t safe to ride–but he is! My tumble was my own fault for letting them put on that fool English saddle. Never again for me!”
“They are all right for old folks and a pacing pony,” he observed, and again he heard the bubbling laugh.
“Well, Pat is not a pacing pony, not by a long shot; and I’m not old folks–yet!” Then after a little silence, “Haven’t you any curiosity?”
“I reckon there’s none allowed me on this count,” he replied without lifting his head, “between the wooden bars and Pedro’s shirt you certainly put the fences up on me.”
“I’m a damsel in distress waiting for a rescuing knight with a white banner and a milk-white steed–” went on the laughing voice in stilted declamation.
“Sorry, friend, but my cayuse is a roan, and I never carried a white flag yet. You pick the wrong colors.”
Whereupon he began the chanting of a war song, with an eye stealthily on the barred window.
Hurrah! Hurrah! For southern rights, hurrah!
Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag
That bears the single star!
“Oh! I know that!” the voice was now a hail of recognition. “Cap Pike always sings that when he’s a little ‘how-came-ye-so’–and you’re a Johnny Reb!”
“Um! twice removed,” assented the man by the wall, “and you are a raiding Yank who has been landed in one of our fortresses with only one shirt to her back, and that one borrowed.”
He had a momentary vision of two laughing gray eyes beside the olla, and the girl behind the bars laughed until Merced let the grindstone halt while she cast a glance towards the house as if in doubt as to whether three feet of adobe wall and stout bars could serve instead of a dueña to foolish young Americans who chattered according to their foolishness.
There was an interval of silence, and then the girlish voice called again.
“Hi, Johnny Reb!”
“Same to you, Miss Yank.”
“Aren’t you the new Americano from California, for the La Partida rancho?”