Across the Mesa. Helen Bagg
if they’ve seen anything of her,” and he strode away toward the office.
Mrs. Van Zandt sat watching him as he swung down the street. The sun’s gilding had faded from the mountains and it was growing dark. Here and there a star peeped out as though to commiserate Athens upon its loneliness.
“It is lonely,” Mrs. Van said to herself. “I don’t know as I ever felt it so much before. I hope it don’t mean that we’re going to have trouble. Sometimes I think I must be psychic—I seem to sense things so. Wish that girl had stayed at home, but, Lord, I’d of done the same thing at her age. That’s a youngster’s first idea when things go wrong—to run away. As though you could run away from things!”
The lady shook her head pessimistically and drew her sweater more closely about her as the air grew chillier. A short plump figure with a shawl wrapped around its head came out from the back of the house and melted into the darkness.
“Is that you, Dolores?”
“Si. The deeshes all feenish,” said Dolores, promptly.
“Did you wash out the dish towels?”
“Si. All done. I go to bed.” Dolores disappeared.
“You’re a liar,” breathed Mrs. Van, softly. “You ain’t goin’ to bed, you’re goin’ to set and spoon with that good-looking cousin of yours. Well, go to it. You’re only young once and this country’d drive a woman to most anything.” Her eyes twinkled humorously. When Mrs. Van’s eyes twinkled you forgot that her face was hard.
“My, but they’re hittin’ it up on Broadway about this time! Let’s see—it’ll be about eleven—the theatres just lettin’ out, crowds going up and down and pouring into restaurants. Say, ain’t it queer the difference in people’s lives? There’s them sitting on plush and eating lobster, and here’s me looking into emptiness and half expecting to see a Yaqui grinning at me from behind a bush! Hullo, you back?”
Scott, accompanied by Hard, came down the street again. Both seemed disturbed.
“Well,” remarked the former, grimly. “She’s started.”
“Started?” Mrs. Van rose. “What do you mean by that?”
“I got Jack Morgan’s mother on the ’phone,” said Scott. “Seems she’d been trying to get us. The girl got into Conejo about six—just after our train pulled out—tried to get us on the ’phone and couldn’t; so she got a machine and is on the way over.”
“Got a machine!” Mrs. Van gasped. “Are the Morgans crazy?”
“Jack and his wife have gone over to Mescal with their car and there’s nobody home but the old lady and the youngsters. Old lady Morgan’s deaf and hollers over the wire so I couldn’t get much of what she said,” continued Scott, ruefully. “I made up my mind that she’d got old Mendoza to bring her over in his Ford. Guess it’s up to me to harness up and go over to meet them.”
“I should say so. That girl must be scared to death if nothing worse has happened to her.”
“Nothing worse will happen to her with Mendoza—unless he runs her into an arroyo. Mendoza’s principles are better than his eyesight. But, believe me, she deserves to be scared. It might put a little sense into her.”
“Shall I drive over with you?” queried Hard.
“No, but you might help Mrs. Van move our things down to Jimmy’s. I thought we’d put her in our shack, Mrs. Van, and you could come up and stay with her.” And Scott swung off into the direction of the corral.
The other two proceeded to the company house, as the superintendent’s quarters were called.
“Well,” said the lady, as they began to pack the two men’s belongings, “I expected to get this house ready for a bride and groom but I must say I wasn’t looking for a lone woman. And yet if I’d had my wits about me I might have known. Only last night Dolores and me were running the Ouija and it says—look out for trouble—just as plain as that!”
“I shouldn’t call her anything as bad as that,” said Hard, crossing to where the photograph of Polly Street hung over the fireplace.
The picture showed a small girl, probably about ten or eleven; a fat little girl with chubby legs only half covered with socks, and with dimples in the knees; a little girl with very wide open eyes and a plump face, a firmly shaped mouth and a serious expression; a little girl with frizzly hair and freckles that the photographer had failed to retouch, in a costume consisting of a short skirt, middy, and tam-o’-shanter.
“I wouldn’t call her a trouble maker,” said Hard, laughing, “unless she’s changed a lot in ten years.”
CHAPTER III
EN ROUTE
To say that the days which followed Miss Street’s unconventional decision passed in a whirl is to be both trite and truthful. In fact, it was not until she had crossed the border that she found leisure to reflect.
To begin with, the parents had been difficult, as good parents usually are when youth begins to chafe at restriction, especially if youth happens to belong to the weaker but no longer the less adventurous sex. The Streets were easy-going people who liked to live by the way. They were not ambitious and they were not adventurous and they hated letting go of their children. It was bad enough to have a son marooned in a mining camp without losing a daughter in the same way. Only downright persuasion by the daughter, combined with remembrance of quite unalarming letters from the son resulted in the desired permission.
“After all, if Emma’s parents let her go down there, I suppose we needn’t be afraid,” said Mrs. Street, who disliked argument.
“In my opinion, Emma’s parents are fools,” replied Mr. Street, sternly. “Or else, like us, they’ve raised a daughter they can’t control.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, Elbridge!”
“I would. You might as well look things in the face.”
“But, Father, you know Bob’s part of the country has been very calm; and I never get a chance to do anything interesting! You sat down on me when I wanted to drive a motor truck in France——”
Any father can continue this lament from memory. The discussion had ended as discussions with spoiled children usually end. There had been a hurried packing and the familiar trip across the continent. It was only when she alighted at a border town and after some anxious hours waiting to have her passports viséd and her transportation arranged, embarked on the shabby south-bound train on the other side, that Polly fully realized the expedition to which she was committed.
Up to this time her thoughts had been of the life she was leaving, and, it must be admitted, of Joyce Henderson. From Illinois to Texas she told herself exactly what she thought of a man who could so boldly and plainly and with such an evident relief accept his dismissal at the hands of the girl he had claimed to love; but by the time the train had jogged through miles of queer brownish yellow country, dotted with mesquite and punctured with cactus, relieved here and there by foothills, and frowned upon by distant mountains, her meditations assumed a more cheerful complexion.
The outlook, monotonous as it was, fascinated her. There were adobe houses with brown youngsters playing in the scanty shade, much as one sees them in New Mexico and Arizona; there were uprooted rails and the ruins of burned cars—evidences of civil war unknown on our side of the line. There was a strong wind blowing—the early spring wind of the Southwest,