Part 35 (1/2)

”You have me at last. I didn't put the poison in that spring. I would not have drunk it if I had. It was the one below I fixed for you. And I'm in your power now. Be quick about it.”

For one long minute Jondo looked down at his enemy. Then he lifted his eyes to mine with the victory of ”him that overcometh” s.h.i.+ning in their blue depths.

”If I could make you live, I'd do it, Fred. If you have any word to say, be quick about it now. Your time is short.”

The sweetness of that gentle voice I hear sometimes to-day in the low notes of song-birds, and the gentle swish of refres.h.i.+ng summer showers.

Ferdinand Ramero lifted his cold blue eyes and looked at the man bending over him.

”Leave me here--forgotten--”

”Not of G.o.d. His Mercy endureth forever,” Jondo replied.

But there was no repentance, no softening of the hard, imperious heart.

We left him there, pulling down the loose earth from the steep sides of the draw to cover him from all the frowning elements of the plains. And when we went back to the waiting train Jondo reported, grimly:

”_No enemy in sight.”_

We laid Bill Banney beside the poisoned spring, from whose bitter waters he had saved our lives. So martyrs filled the unknown graves that made the milestones of the way in the days of commerce-building on the old Santa Fe Trail.

The next spring was not far ahead, as Bill's note had said, but the stars were thick above us and the desolate land was full of shadows before we reached it--a thirst-mad, heart-sore crowd trailing slowly on through the gloom of the night.

Beverly was waiting for us and the refres.h.i.+ng moisture of the air above a spring seemed about him.

”I thought you'd never come. Where's Bill? There's water here. I made the spring myself,” he shouted, as we came near.

The spring that he had digged for us was in the sandy bed of a dry stream, with low, earth-banks on either side. It was full of water, hardly clear, but plentiful, and slowly was.h.i.+ng out a bigger pool for itself as it seeped forth.

”There is poison in the real spring down there.” Beverly pointed toward the diminished fountain we had expected to find. ”I've worked since noon at this.”

We drank, and life came back to us. We pitched camp, and then listened to Beverly's story of the sweet and bitter waters of the trail that day.

And all the while it seemed as if Bill Banney was just out of sight and might come galloping in at any moment.

”You know what happened up the trail,” my cousin said, sadly. ”Bill was ahead of me and he drank first, and galloped back to warn me and beg me to come on for water. I thought I could get down here and take some water back to Bill in time. It's all shale up there. No place to dig above, nor below, even if one dared to dig below that poison. But I found a dead coyote that had just left here, and all springs began to look Comanche to me. I lariated my pony and crept down under the bank there to think and rest. Everything went poison-spotted before my eyes.”

”Where's your pony now, Bev?” Jondo asked.

”I don't know sure, but I expect he is about going over the Raton Pa.s.s by this time,” Beverly replied. ”Down there things seemed to swim around me like water everywhere and I knew I'd got to stir. Just then an Indian came slipping up from somewhere to the spring to drink. He didn't look right to me at all, but I couldn't sit still and see him kill himself.

If he needed killing I could have done it for him, for he never saw me.

Just as he stooped I saw his face. It was that Apache--Santan--the wander-foot, for I never heard of an Apache getting so far from the mountains. I ought to have kept still, Jondo”--Beverly's ready smile came to his face--”but I'd made that fellow swear he'd let me eternally alone when we had our little fracas up by the San Christobal Arroyo, so something like conscience, mean as the stomach-ache, made me call out:

”'Don't drink there; it's poison.'

”He stopped and stared at me a minute, or ten minutes--I didn't count time on him--and then he said, slow-like:

”'It's the spring west that is poisoned. I put it there for you. You will not see your men again. They will drink and die. Who put this poison here?'