Marah Ryan - The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine

Rhodes spoke to her in Spanish, and her eyes lit up with kindly appreciation.

“Ah, very good!” she commented amicably. “You are not then too much Americano?”

“Well, yes, I’m about as American as you find them aside from the Apache and Pima and the rest of the tribes.”

“Maybe so, but not gringo,” she persisted. “I am scared of the Apache the same as of El Gavilan, and today my heart was near to stop going at all when we lose señorita and that black horse–and I say a prayer for you to San Antonio when I see you come fetch her home again.”

“Yes, the black horse is valuable,” remarked Billie. “Huh! I might as well be in a convent for all I get to see of the ranges these late days. If anyone would grubstake me, I’d break loose with Cap here and go prospecting for adventures into some of the unnamed ranges.”

“You see!” said Tia Luz. “Is it a wonder I am cold with the fear when she is away from my eyes? I have lived to see the people who go into the desert for adventure, and whose bare bones are all any man looks on again! Beside the mountain wells of Carrizal my own cousin’s husband died; he could not climb to the tank in the hill. There they found him in the moon of Kumaki, which is gray and nothing growing yet.”

“Yes, many’s the salt outfit in the West played out before they reached Tinajas Altas,” said Pike. “I’ve heard curious tales about that place, and the Carrizals as well. Billie’s father nearly cashed in down in the Carrizals, and one of his men did.”

“But that is what I am saying. It was Dario Ruiz,” stated Tia Luz. “Yes, señor, that was the time, and it was for the nameless ranges they went seeking, and for adventures, treasure too; but–his soul to God! it was death Dario was finding on that trail. Your father never would speak one word again of the treasure of that old fable, for Dario found death instead of the red gold, and Dario was compadre to him.”

“The red gold?” and Cap Pike’s eyes were alight with interest. “Why, I was telling Kit about that today, the red gold of El Alisal.”

“Yes, Señor Capitan, once so rich and so red it was a wonder in Spain when the padres are sending it there from the mission of Soledad, and then witches craft, like a cloud, come down and cover that mountain. So is the vein lost again, and it is nearly one hundred years. So how could Dario think to find it when the padres, with all their prayer, never once found the trail?”

“I never heard it was near a mission,” remarked Pike. “Why, if it had a landmark like that there should be no trouble.”

“Yet it is so, and much trouble, also deaths,” stated Tia Luz. “That is how the saying is that the red gold of El Alisal is gold bewitched, for of Soledad not one adobe is now above ground unless it be in the old walls of the hacienda. All is melted into earth again or covered by the ranch house, and it is said the ranch house is also neglected now, and many of its old walls are going.”

“There are still enough left to serve as a very fair fortress,” remarked Singleton. “I was down there two years ago when we bought some herds from Perez, and lost quite a number from lack of water before the vaqueros got them to La Partida wells. It is a long way between water holes over in Altar.”

“Sure,” agreed Pike, “but if the old mine was near a mission, and the mission was near the ranch of Soledad it should not be a great stunt to find it, and there must be water and plenty of it if they do much in cattle.”

“They don’t these days,” said Singleton. “Perez sold a lot rather than risk confiscation, and I heard they did have some raids down there. I thought I had heard most of the lost mine legends of western Sonora, but I never heard of that one, and I never heard that Fred Bernard went looking for it.”

The old woman lifted her brows and shrugged her shoulders with the suggestion that Sonora might hold many secrets from the amicable gentleman. But a little later, in an inquiry from Rhodes she explained.

“See you, señor, Dario Ruiz was compadre of Señor Alfredo Bernard, Americanos not understanding all in that word, and the grandfather of Dario was major-domo of the rancho of Soledad at that time the Apaches are going down and killing the people there. That is when the mine was lost. On the skin of a sheep it was told in writing all about it, and Dario had that skin. Sure he had! It was old and had been buried in the sand, and holes were eaten in it by wild things, but Don Alfredo did read it, and I was hearing the reading of it to Dario Ruiz, but of what use the reading when that mine bewitched itself into hiding?”

“But the writing? Did that bewitch itself away also?” demanded Billie.

“How could I be asking of that when Dario was dead down there in the desert, and his wife, that was my cousin Anita, was crazy wild against Don Alfredo the father of you! Ai, that was a bad time, and Don Alfredo with black silence on him for very sorrow. And never again in his life did he take the Sonora trail for adventures or old treasure. And it is best that you keep to a mind like his mind, señorita. He grew wise, but Dario died for that wisdom, and in Sonora someone always dies before wisdom is found. First it was two priests went to death for that gold, and since that old day many have been going. It is a witchcraft, and no blessing on it!”

“Well, I reckon I’d be willing to cross my fingers, and take the trail if I could get started right,” decided Rhodes. “It certainly sounds alluring.”

“I did go in once,” confessed Pike, “but we had no luck, struck a temporale where a Papago had smallpox, and two dry wells where there should have been water. My working pardner weakened at Paradones and we made tracks for the good old border. That is no trail for a lone white man.”

“But the writing, the writing!” persisted Billie. “Tia Luz, you are a gold mine yourself of stories, but this one you never told, and I am crazy about it! You never forget anything, and the writing you could not,–so we know you have the very words of that writing!”

“Yes, that is true too, for the words were not so many, and where some words had been the wild things had eaten holes. The words said that from the mine of El Alisal the mission of Soledad could be seen. And from the door of Soledad it was one look, one only, to the blue cañoncita where the alisal tree was growing, and water from the gold of the rose washed the roots of that tree.”

“Good God!” muttered Rhodes staring at the old lady who sat nodding her head in emphasis until her jet and gold earrings were all a-twinkle. “It was as easy as that ,–yet no one found it?”

“But señor,”–and it was plain to be seen that Doña Luz was enjoying herself hugely as the center of all attention, “the two padres who made that writing met their death at that place–and it was said the barbaros at last killed also the grandfather of Dario, anyway he did die, and the women were afraid to tell even a new padre of that buried writing for the cause that it must have been accursed when it killed all people. That is how it was, and that mission was forsaken after that time. A Spaniard came up from Sinaloa and hunted gold and built Soledad hacienda where that mission had been in that old time, but no one ever found any more of gold than the chickens always are picking, a little here, a little there with a gravel in the craw. No señor, only once the red gold–red as flame–went out of Altar on a mule to the viceroy in Mexico, and the padres never lived to send any more, or see their brothers again. The men who dug that gold dug also their grave. Death goes with it.”

“Ugh!” and Billie shivered slightly, and looked at Rhodes, “don’t you go digging it!”