The Forbidden Trail Part 28

"Felicia!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Roger.

"She hasn't been here to-day," exclaimed Ernest.

Charley set the basket slowly down on the sand while her face whitened.

"She started down here at nine o'clock with her doll and her olla."

There was a moment's silence, then Roger cried cheerfully, "Well, don't be frightened! Nothing could have happened to her. She must have gone on an investigating trip of her own."

"I'll go after Preble," said Ernest, "and we'll take the horses and round her up in a jiffy."

He and Gustav started immediately up the trail. Roger stopped long enough to carry the heavy basket to the cook tent. "Look out for Miss Preble, will you, Mrs. von Minden?" he said to that lady who was finis.h.i.+ng her second meal.

"I must go home," faltered Charley. "She may--Roger, look in the old Mellish shaft." She gave a little sob and Mrs. von Minden suddenly put her arm about her.

Roger started on a run after the others.

They overtook d.i.c.k, just as he was turning out of the lower end of the alfalfa field into the trail. At their shout he pulled up the horses and waited. He began to unharness before the first sentence was finished. He and Roger both mounted, leaving Gustav and Ernest to go up to the corral after the other two horses. Just at this moment there came through the afterglow a familiar treble shriek.

"Oh! Oh! d.i.c.keee!"

The four men were motionless. Coming down the trail from the mountains was a little figure in blue overalls, curly head glorious in the last of the sunset gleam.

"Wait for me, Roger, wait!" shrieked Felicia, trying to quicken a very tired gait, and much impeded by a basket, which she clasped with both arms. Ernest suddenly broke into a run and picked the child up, basket and all. d.i.c.k dropped from his horse and followed to lift her away from Ernest's clinging arms.

"She's my sister, let me take her," he said hoa.r.s.ely.

"Vere vas you, liebchen?" asked Schmidt.

"Well," said Felicia, looking a little bewildered--"Oh, Roger dear, look--the squaw gave me a basket and some eenty dishes, just like the olla."

"Felicia, where have you been?" begged Roger; "tell us, honey."

"Why, I just went over the mountain to find the place d.i.c.k told about where the Indians make dishes. And I got lost, and a squaw found me and I had a funny dinner with her and I bought these dishes and I told her d.i.c.k would pay for them and I brought you each a present and I'm awful tired." She stopped for lack of breath.

d.i.c.k looked helplessly at the other men. "It's five mountain miles to that Indian camp," he said.

"I got tired," Felicia nodded her head, "but Qui-tha brought me home. He wanted some more peroxide. So I gave him the bottle in your room, d.i.c.ky.

He was so good to bring me home. He went right back with it."

"I wish I'd had a quart for the good old fool," said d.i.c.k.

"Where are you all going? Where's Charley?" asked Felicia.

"She's nearly frantic about you," exclaimed Roger. "We were all going to look for you."

Felicia's liquid eyes widened with sudden understanding. "Put me down, d.i.c.k, I want to go to Charley."

"Here she comes now," said Ernest.

Charley was breathless with running. Felicia set her basket in the sand and rushed into her sister's arms. The men all started explaining at once. Charley, still clasping Felicia, listened, then looked down on the curly head resting against her heart.

"Felicia, how could you be so naughty," she asked gently.

"Now, don't you scold her, Charley," protested d.i.c.k.

"Do I ever scold any one, d.i.c.k? Only Felicia must realize that she did a very dangerous thing that she must never, never do again."

"How do you mean, dangerous?" asked Felicia. "Did I make you feel badly, Charley?"

"You made me sick at heart with fear, Felicia," replied Charley.

Felicia gave a great sob. "Oh, I wouldn't do that for anything!"

"I move," said Roger, "that we go on over to the Sun Plant and that the two ladies talk this over after supper. And I'll carry Felicia pig-a-back."

The motion was unanimously carried. Ernest went up to help d.i.c.k with the ch.o.r.es and Roger and Gustav prepared supper while Charley sat on the bench with Felicia in her lap, and directed operations. The pot of beans and the biscuit she had brought in the basket made the meal-getting a simple matter. Mrs. von Minden was almost human, that evening. She sat with the young people during their meal and for an hour afterward, once rising, unexpectedly, to kiss Charley.

Felicia went to sleep when half way through supper, just after she had given Roger his present.

"It's a little clock," she said, holding out a small steam gauge, rusty and battered. "I found it in one of the sheds up on the mountain, where I stopped to rest."

Roger looked at it curiously. "That was an expensive gauge in its day,"

he said. "How do you suppose she happened to find it?"

"Harder not to find it," replied d.i.c.k. "The ranges are full of deserted mines. They took out all the free gold, then tried to work out the rest, found it too expensive, went broke and walked out. There's enough fine machinery up in the mountains to make you believe what folks say around here, that more money goes into the ground than ever comes out of it."

Roger looked at d.i.c.k thoughtfully. "I'm glad to know that," he said.

"Felicia's given me a sure-enough present, haven't you, little girl?"

But Felicia, her head burrowed against d.i.c.k's willing shoulder was fast asleep.

"When do you expect to cut your first crop, d.i.c.k?" asked Ernest.

"If the alfalfa gets a toe hold before the first of May I'll get a crop this summer. The dust storms don't begin till May. They all blow down from the north or west and I'm sure that that draw between here and the field will protect me. I shall start cottonwoods and arrow-weed wind breaks as soon as I turn the water in. Hackett is getting some young trees for me."

"Isn't farming a terrible thing--terrible," said Mrs. von Minden suddenly. Then she closed her eyes and began to speak rapidly. "When we first came out here Otto wanted me to run a ranch for him while he did his other work. I was so innocent and so ignorant that I let him start me at it.

"In the Colorado river bottoms it was, below Fort Mohave. A group of fools like me thought to grow alfalfa in the bottom land, and dike the fields to keep the Colorado out at flood. Covered with arrow-weed, six and eight feet tall, the land was, when we got there. But the dikes were finished and some of the folks were beginning to clear the land.

"Otto cut enough arrow weed to put the tent up and then he found that he must put our bed high on a platform, the rattlesnakes were so thick.

This done, he left me some money and told me to get an Indian to help me and off he went on one of his prospecting trips. I used to lie at night staring at the sky and crying with fear, fear of Otto and fear of the snakes that rattled and whirred all night.

"I found an Indian and he and I cleared about five acres of land and got the seed in. But the water used to run out of my mouth every minute with the snake fear. Then one night a rattler got one of our horses and my fear of what Otto would say if the other was bitten was greater than my fear of the snakes, and one night, while I watched beside the remaining horse, I killed a rattler. I waited for him to coil, then as I had seen the others do, I brought the b.u.t.t end of an arrow-weed down on the coils and my fear of snakes was gone.

"Food was hard to get. There were only eight of us there. And as it got hot, some of them left. By the time we were expecting the river to rise in spring flood, there were only three fools in the colony. And I seldom saw the other two. There was a hundred acres of arrow-weed between them and me. My Indian left, after the crop came up. So I was all alone when the flood came. The first day my dikes began to leak. For eighteen hours I toted adobe to mend them with. When my strength gave out the water was two feet deep over my little field. My baby came that night, much too soon. I'd have died just as it did, if my Indian with a squaw hadn't happened back to beg for food. They took me over to the California side in their flat boat, and I never went back to the ranch again, though Otto tried to make me."

There was silence for a time. Mrs. von Minden, eyes still closed, seemed to be concentrating. Suddenly Charley leaned forward to say a little huskily,