The Forbidden Trail by Honoré Willsie (best selling autobiographies .txt) 📖

announced that one day's work would make him ready for a test, so that, and he did not believe that he was over-confident, when Gustav arrived with the Smithsonian investigator, the plant would be in full action. He made this announcement at breakfast. Ernest and Gustav cheered.

"I never thought you'd make it," said Gustav.

"I had to make it," replied Roger. "I have the conviction that if this man, whoever he is, sees the plant working, the thing will be done, and that if he doesn't find the wheels going round, I'm going to miss the chance of my life."

"If the heat would just let up for a little while," sighed Ernest. "If he's a northerner, it may put him out of business."

"Pshaw! they'll send an experienced man, never fear!" Roger poured himself another cup of coffee. "Hello! Here's a caller!"

It was Qui-tha, riding a half-starved pony whose mangy sides were working in the early morning sun like a pair of bellows.

He dismounted and grinned affably. "How! You give Qui-tha more strong medicine, maybe!"

"Look here, Qui-tha, I'll give you all the strong medicine you want, if you'll stay and help me for a week," cried Ernest.

Qui-tha shook his head. "No got time to work. Must go back to Injun camp take care of sick Injun. Qui-tha heap big medicine man, now."

"All right!" Ernest shrugged his shoulders. "No work, no strong medicine."

Qui-tha shrugged his shoulders and remounting, he started on up the trail to the ranch house. Elsa reported later in the day that Dick, having no peroxide, had promised to get some from Archer's Springs if Qui-tha would do a day's work for him. Qui-tha, she said, was giving the matter due consideration.

Late that evening, while Roger and Gustav were working at the little forge, Ernest came out of the living tent where he had been writing letters.

"Did you fellows hear a gun shot a little bit ago?" he asked. "You two are making such an infernal racket, I can't tell what it was."

Roger and Gustav both stopped work and listened. The desert was breathlessly silent.

"Are you sure?" asked Roger. "Did you think it might have been at the ranch?"

"I couldn't tell. It may have been nothing at all but you folks here. But if I hear it again, I'm going up there."

It was fifteen or twenty minutes later that Elsa's voice came from the trail.

"Ernest! Roger! Gustav!"

The three men started on a run to meet her. A dark figure in the starlight, she staggered exhausted toward them.

"The Indian—had whiskey—he and Dick both drunk. The Indian shot Dick—in the leg and ran away."

"Did he hurt you girls?" cried Roger.

"Not a bit. But Dick's terrible. We've got him in his bedroom. But if his leg didn't prevent him he'd climb out of the window."

As she spoke, she turned back toward the ranch with the men. "You go ahead. I'm all in and will follow slowly," she said.

"Not with that Indian around in the desert," exclaimed Ernest. "Gustav, you come along with Elsa and Roger and I'll run for it."

They could hear Dick's roars as they neared the adobe. When they burst breathlessly into the living room, Charley was standing by the door holding in place a chair which hung on the knob and against the door jamb made an effective bolt.

"Is he armed?" asked Roger.

"No," replied Charley. "There's the only gun in the house," pointing to the one on the table. "And Qui-tha had his with him as he ran out of the house."

Roger turned to Ernest. "We could just leave him in there alone to wake up, if there wasn't danger of his bleeding to death. Come on, Ern. Remember he's as strong as a bear and be ready to jump him with me. Get some clean rags and water, Charley, and bring them in when we call. And keep Gustav out. He'll faint."

They slid quickly into Dick's room, closing the door behind them. Dick lay on the bed, blood oozing through his pants leg below the knee. He seemed too sick to move, but Roger would take no chances.

"Ern, you hold his hands above his head while I cut off that pants leg."

The precautions were unnecessary. Dick lay muttering and limp while Roger uncovered a nasty wound that had plowed to the bone down Dick's skin.

"Qui-tha must have been at close quarters when that happened," said Ernest. "You'll need help, Roger. Hand me that towel and I'll tie his hands."

Roger handed Ernest the towel, then went out for the rags and water. Gustav and Elsa had arrived. He had hardly answered them that Dick's wound was not very serious when there was a sudden uproar. Dick had gone amuck again and even the girls had to be called into service to help with the bandaging while the men held him quiet.

By the time the blood flow was staunched and the rude bandaging finished, Dick had subsided into a drunken stupor, from which, in spite of his evident pain, there seemed little danger of his rousing for some hours. Leaving Gustav to watch, the others withdrew to the living room.

"What have you done with Felicia?" asked Roger.

"She's slept through it all, thank heaven," replied Charley. "I ran into her room as soon as Qui-tha had clattered away and she was sound asleep. So I just locked the door. I'll go in now and attend to her."

She picked up a candle and tiptoed into the bedroom. There was a moment's hush, then Charley rushed back into the living room.

"She's not there! Felicia!" Her voice rising to a scream. "Felicia! Where are you?"

Elsa ran wildly into the bedroom followed by the others. The little room was empty. Felicia's nightdress lay in a heap on the floor. The clothing she had taken off was gone. A quick search of the house, then of the outbuildings was made. To no avail. Some one gasped:

"Qui-tha!"

But Charley who had recovered her self control, vetoed this idea at once. "An Indian isn't like that! Roger, she climbed out of the window to run to you."

"I'll go down there at once," replied Roger. "The rest of you keep on calling and searching around here."

"Ride old Nell," Charley suggested, as Roger hurried away.

But Felicia was not at the Sun Plant, nor did Roger's stentorian shouts raise any reply save faint howls from a coyote pack. With a sinking heart he rode back to the ranch and called in the others whose lights were flashing about the mountainside.

"If she started for our camp," he said, "I don't see how she could have wandered away. She knows that trail so well."

"But she has never taken it alone after dark." Elsa's voice was uncertain. "And she's so little! And it was so dark to-night, I kept wandering off the trail myself."

"Let's not waste time surmising!" exclaimed Ernest, impatiently.

"But we must use a little system," returned Roger. "Girls, you patrol the trail up and down between the Sun Plant and here. I've left a lighted 'bug' in the tent. You both carry 'bugs' and extra candles and keep calling. The moon will soon be rising, and that will help. Gustav, you make a big circle round the camp as far out as you can keep the tent light in sight. Ern, you follow the Archer's Springs trail a mile or so, then swing inside of Gustav's circle and cover all the arroyas and rock heaps you can. I'm going to take the mountain trail. Everybody get something for a tourniquet. At sun up, come back here. If you can find her, or even get her trail, fire three shots."

Elsa gave a little sob, but Charley was tearless. As they started for their respective stations, she asked: "How about Dick?"

Roger flushed a deep red. "Dick rots for all I care until we find Felicia."

No one commented on this and shortly the desert was dotted with slow moving fingers of light. Roger, as he panted up and down the mountainside, knew that never would he forget the wistful melancholy of those thin calls that rose and fell all night, now in Gustav's, or Ernest's deep notes, now in the high treble tones of Elsa or Charlotte. "Felicia! Felicia! Felicia!" But Felicia did not answer.

With the dawn, the wind rose, and there began that perpetual shifting and sifting of the sand which in a few hours more, Roger knew, would obliterate the little girl's trail, although it was only a summer wind which would die down by mid-morning.

At sun up, a weary eyed, hoarse and hectic group gathered in the living room of the adobe.

"Now," said Roger, "you girls get three or four hours' sleep, then one of you go down to the Plant and one of you stay here. We three men will take a day's water and grub supply and keep to the general beats we had last night. I can't believe, unless Qui-tha got her, that she wandered very far."

"But I saw her after Qui-tha had gone. If a rattler struck her she—" Charley stopped.

"How long does a person live after a rattler bite?" asked Ernest, with stiff lips.

"A Mexican who worked for us three years ago lived twelve hours but he was unconscious most of the time," replied Charley.

"Now, you girls go cook a little breakfast," said Gustav, hastily, "and ve vill do the chores, eh?"

They ate a hasty meal in the kitchen a little later. No one talked. Charley patted Elsa's shoulder in a helpless way when Elsa now and again burst into tears. They had finished their preparation for the renewal of the search when Dick called from the bedroom. Charley went to him, closing the door after her. What she said the others did not know but there was silence in the bedroom for some moments after she came out. Then there was a confusion of sounds and Dick dragged himself on his hands and knees into the kitchen. He pulled himself up into the chair by the table. The others stood silently looking at him.

"O God!" he groaned. "O God in Heaven!"

Still no one spoke.

"Hurry!" he shouted. "What are you waiting for? She may be dead now! Hurry, you fools!"

"I'm going to stay here, Dick," said Elsa.

"You'll not! To hell with me!" Dick paused and lifted a shaking hand to his eyes for a moment. "Rog, you go along the foot of the range and search every canyon. Watch every spot of shade. I've warned her so often about desert sun."

Roger nodded and started off, Peter following him with a good supply of water and food on his back. Ernest and Gustav were to use the two horses.

The sun rose higher and higher, crossed the zenith and traveled toward the River Range. Roger, with dogged thoroughness, followed the trail suggested by Dick. He was numb with fear. Remotely he recalled that somehow he had been expecting this to be a decisive day in his history but it was only a fleeting memory. Every sense that he possessed was concentrated on finding Felicia. At noon, he ate and drank something, then lay down in the shade of a canyon to sleep for an hour or so, with Peter standing like a little gray bodyguard beside him. At three he was plodding on his way again, around cactus thicket, up and down washouts, over rockheaps, talking to Peter when the silence became unendurable, or his voice refused to rise longer with Felicia's name. He could with difficulty urge his body on through the burning heat. What then of a tender little girl? In this summer sun of the desert a man without water for twenty-four hours would die. What of Felicia?

By sun down he had covered several miles on either side of the ranch. He was covered with dust and his lips were cracking in spite of his free use of the canteen. He was tired to the very bones