He washed the blood from his right arm and examined the wound. The bullet had struck him between the elbow and shoulder and had passed out again without touching the bone. The second shot had missed him. He tore some strips from his shirt, and bound it up as well as he could with his left hand aided by his teeth.
He drew his belt tighter to keep off hunger, and drank again before facing the long leagues of waterless desert between him and Santiago. He looked at the rolling river and at the farther shore where he had so longed to be. "_Rio maldito!_" he cried. "Accursed stream, what happiness you have robbed me of! what misery you have wrought us! Why could you not wait only one day longer?" He turned away, set his face towards the pueblo, and began his weary journey.
He soon found the weight of his arm grow more and more painful as his pulse beat faster with movement, and he had to carry it across his body, supporting it with the other. But he pushed on with a steady, untiring gait, showing the marvellous power of his race to bear pain and fatigue and hunger and thirst. On all the Western frontier there is no white man that is not proud to be credited with "Indian endurance."
Curiously enough, he felt no fear. The cacique's threat to kill him did not affect his purpose in the slightest. He had recoiled from instant death when the pistol cracked in his face, but that was only instinctive, defenceless as he was against a man with firearms. He felt no shame at having done so. It did not seem to him cowardly to avoid being killed if he could. But he did not flinch for a moment when he thought of returning to the pueblo. No doubt Salvador would try to carry out his threat. "Well," thought he, "I must be beforehand with him. If I can't hold my father's gun with this sore arm, I must get Tito's pistol; Tito is my friend; he will not be afraid to let me have it."
The sun rose high in the heavens and beat down upon him as he toiled along, parching him with thirst. He was travelling the same trail back to Santiago that he had traversed the night before. The tracks of the horses going and returning were plainly visible. But what a change for him! A few hours before he had ridden that way feeling every inch a man, with his sweetheart in his arms and the happiness of a lifetime within his grasp; and now--As the thought stung him he pulled himself together and forced his weary feet to carry him on faster.
But anger had made him overestimate his own powers, in declaring that he would be back, and the cacique dead, before night. His strength gave out, and he had to lie down time and again to recover force enough to go on at all. Night overtook him, and he was compelled to stop and light a fire under the lee of a cedar bush, and rest himself in the warmth of it till dawn. Then he set forward, once more, slowly and stiffly, but ever pressing onwards, with his face turned towards the village that was his home, the village where his sweetheart must now be lying at the mercy of her pitiless father. What might not he have done to her ere this! That torturing thought goaded him to renewed efforts.
When he reached the edge of the mesa he was crossing, he looked down into the sandy valley that separated him from the next one; and there right below him, coming at brisk pace, was a mounted Indian. He instantly crouched down to watch if the new-comer were friend or foe; but in a minute he sprang from his concealment. It was Tito,--Tito on the mule of the American.
With a joyful cry he ran to meet him. Tito knew him and shouted back in welcome. "Why, Felipe!" he cried, "I was looking for your body, and here you are alive. Jump up and I'll take you right back. But you're wounded," he added, seeing his arm bound up. "Is it bad? Let me help you up," and he jumped off to help his friend to mount to the saddle.
"Salvador gave me a shot," answered Felipe as he got on with Tito's help; "but it's not very bad."
Tito turned the mule's head round towards Santiago, and jumping on behind struck out for home. The tough little mule made light of the double burden, and rejoicing in the prospect of going back to his beloved mare set off briskly.
"Now tell me all about it," said Tito eagerly.
"Tell me first," answered Felipe, "where is Salvador? What has he done with Josefa?"
"Salvador is made prisoner by the Americano," replied Tito, "for killing you. They think you're dead over there, and they've given Josefa to Sooshiuamo, hoping to keep him from taking the cacique to Santa Fe. He asked for her." Felipe's heart gave a sudden bound. He knew of course that there were white men in many of the Indian tribes with half-breed families, but he had never thought of Don Estevan as that sort of man.
"_Valgame Dios!_" he cried. "What does he want her for?"
"Who knows?" replied Tito guardedly. "Perhaps he wants someone to cook for him and to take care of the house when he is away. It was he that stopped the cacique from beating her."
"_Valgame Dios!_" said Felipe again. He hardly heard the rest of Tito's story. He was filled with new fears. Was everyone against him? Was the Americano, of all men in the world, to be the one to supplant him? He remained silent a while, but his suspicions were too strong to be entirely concealed.
"How did he ask for her?" he inquired. "Tell me, Tito."
"He said the pueblo had agreed to give him anything he wanted for blasting the rock," answered Tito; "and he said that he wanted her. So Salvador gave her to him. They all told Salvador to do it, for they thought then he wouldn't take him to Santa Fe. They all agreed to it.
Sooshiuamo has put her with Reyna. She's there now."
"Tito," said Felipe very earnestly, "will you lend me your pistol?"
"What for?" said Tito.
Felipe hesitated. Two conflicting plans of vengeance were struggling within him. Then he answered, "The cacique said he'd kill me if I came back. If he has a pistol, I ought to have one. It wasn't fair there by the river."
"Nonsense," said Tito; "he's not going to kill you. Didn't Sooshiuamo make him a prisoner because he thought he had? Why, he was going to take him to Santa Fe to be hanged for it. The cacique was frightened, I can tell you. He won't touch you now, Felipe. Sooshiuamo won't let him."
"Oh, I'm sick of hearing of Sooshiuamo," broke in Felipe impatiently.
"Why won't you lend it to me, Tito? You used to."
"That was to go after wild cows," said Tito. "Now I don't know what you want."
"I want to defend myself," said Felipe in a hurt tone.
"But there's no need to," said Tito. "Never mind what Salvador said. He was angry then. He is frightened now. Don't you mind him. It'll be all right. I'm taking you straight back to Sooshiuamo, just as he told me.
He'll manage it."
It was easy to see who was Tito's hero now.
They came to the edge of the last mesa and looked down upon the Santiago Valley. Tito jumped off to ease the mule, who cleverly picked his way down the steep, rocky escarpment. At the bottom he sprang on again, and they cantered in the last league over the lowlands.
Felipe resigned himself to fate. "If he wrongs her, I'll have his heart's blood," he thought, but the imaginary "he" was not the cacique.
They reached the corrals, and they heard the cry raised of "Tito's coming! Tito's here!" They pushed on through the crowd to the American's house, and Tito, proud of his success, sprang off before the door.
"See, Sooshiuamo, I have brought him," he shouted out joyfully, thinking he was there, as he aided his friend to dismount. "Here's Felipe. He's not dead, but he has a bullet wound."
He pulled the latch-string, but the door refused to open. It was locked.
"I reckon you must shout a bit louder if you want Mr. Sooshiuamo, as you fellers call him," remarked a man who lounged against the wall near Reyna's door, which was only a few yards from Stephens's. "He aint to home just now."
"Why, where is he?" cried the boys in concert.
"Gone off with the cacique," answered Backus, for it was he; "mebbe he thought change of air would be wholesome after all that rumpus they're bin having this morning"; he laughed an evil laugh.
"Oh," cried Tito, "I suppose he's done as he said he would, taken him to Santa Fe for killing Felipe. But why couldn't he wait a little? Here I've brought him back Felipe no more dead than I am."
"No, nor he aint taken him to Santa Fe, neither," rejoined the Texan, with a malicious pleasure in mystifying the boys. He had gone straight to the cacique's house in his dripping garments after his fall into the ditch, and had waited there, meditating revenge, while they were being dried for him, during which interval he had obtained a full account of all that had taken place, including the fact that Josefa had been transferred to the prospector and was now under his protection at Reyna's. He had just walked over to Reyna's, in the hope of interviewing the girl, when the mule with the two boys on his back came in sight.
"All that gas of his about Santa Fe was nothing but a blind," he went on; "what he wanted was to get Miss Josefa for himself. And he's done it, too." He noted the flash in Felipe's eyes as he said this. "Yes, he's got her bottled up tight, inside here." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the house against which he was leaning.
"But that's only to save her from her father," exclaimed Tito hotly. "He was thrashing her like fury, and Sooshiuamo stopped him and took her away from him." Tito did not feel quite sure himself what Stephens's ultimate object might have been,--Americans were such very unaccountable people anyhow,--but he was not going to have this other American saying things about the man who was his particular hero at the moment, without sticking up for him.
"Jes' so," rejoined the Texan, "he's got her away from her daddy, and he's got her for himself. That's the size of it exactly."
Felipe said nothing, but the rage and despair which had taken possession of his heart made him perfectly convinced that the base innuendo of the Texan was only the simple truth. Tito made another effort to withstand the sinister meaning of the words.
"But he hasn't taken her to live with him," he said. "She's not in his house; it's locked up."
"Yes," said Backus, "for a very good reason. He's gone off hunting Navajos, and he's too jealous of her to leave her there by herself. So he's stowed her away, nice and handy, with his most particular friend next door. See? Why, it's as clear as mud."
"What's he gone hunting Navajos for, though?" asked the puzzled young Indian.
"What, don't you know?" said the Texan. "Oh, I suppose the news came after you'd started. Well, there's a pretty kettle of fish. The Navajos have bagged Miss Sanchez, and run her off Lord knows where, and Mr.
Sooshiuamo, instead of taking his newly made father-in-law off to jail, is using him as a smell-dog to run their trail. He and Miss Josefa's daddy are as thick as thieves now. Aint it so, what I've said?" and he appealed to the other Indians standing round for confirmation.
The incredulous Tito appealed to them, too; but the Texan had stated the fact correctly enough; and as for the interpretation he put on them, well, that was a matter where everyone must judge for himself. Opinions varied as to that, but the general verdict was in Backus's favour.
Felipe threw up his unwounded arm in adjuration. "If he takes her from me," he cried, "my curse upon him from the bottom of my heart."
"You seem to take it hard, young man," said Backus eyeing him keenly.
"Say, though, you're looking rather dilapidated. What's wrong with you anyway?"