Part 26 (2/2)
Briefly he recounted it to her and, she listened until the end in a dismayed chaos of mind which culminated in a staggering blow.
”I have found it.” There was no jubilation in his tone, but paradoxically a note of defeat.
”You!” she stammered breathlessly.
”Yes. You seem surprised?” he added with a quick glance at her. ”I know these old legends are mostly regarded as bunk, but now and then one proves to be a straight tip. Generations have searched vainly for the Pool, as I thought you must have heard, but they did not know where to look.”
”Then how did you, a newcomer, discover it?” Willa scarcely recognized her own voice.
”By the simple expedient of following someone else who had stolen a march on me in a despicable fas.h.i.+on.” His jaw set in the old characteristic way she remembered. ”I don't mind admitting that I would have taken almost any means to locate it; that was my main objective in Mexico and I was acting under instructions from my chief.
But I would scarcely have stooped to the method employed by the man of whom I speak.”
”Starr Wiley?” The question was wrung from Willa's lips.
He stared at her.
”You know, then?”
”I--I guessed,” she countered hurriedly. ”I knew that you two were enemies, of course, and it came to me that if anyone had played a false trick upon you it must have been he. You say you found the Pool by following him. How did he know where to search?”
Thode hesitated.
”I found a map of its location, but I had scarcely got my hands upon it when I was struck down from behind and the paper stolen.”
Willa uttered a startled exclamation, but he continued, unheeding.
”Someone found me, hours later, lying unconscious and carried me into Limasito, where your good friend, Jim Baggott, took care of me. It was weeks before I was able to be about again, but I had time to think it all out, Of course, I had not seen my a.s.sailant, but I had had an uncanny intuition all day that I was being shadowed--it was the very day of your departure, by the way--and I knew of only one other beside myself who had taken that legend seriously. Wiley was doing his best to locate the Pool; he was aware that I was there for the same purpose and he would have stopped at nothing to win out, for, as you know, there was bad blood between us. If he did not actually strike the blow that felled me I solemnly believe that he was instrumental in it in some way. Please, don't think me ungenerous toward an enemy that I tell you this, or even harbor such a thought, but events really seemed to bear out my suspicions.”
”No.” Willa was gazing moodily straight before her. ”I do not think you are ungenerous, and I am very glad that you are telling me. I believe, too, that you are right; I feel sure that he must have been responsible for your injury. But I am amazed about the map.”
”I found it in the ashes of Tia Juana's fire; the little fire in the grove of zapote trees where she cooked her tortillas, and brewed her strange concoctions. You had told me of it, do you remember? But perhaps you have not heard: Tia Juana and the boy, Jose, have disappeared. They must have gone on the very day you started for New York, and no one has been able to discover a trace of them, except one.
That is a very significant trace indeed, though.--Have you no curiosity about the Pool?”
He turned to her suddenly, but Willa could not raise her eyes to meet his now.
”Of course,” she stammered.
”It is located on a grapefruit ranch known as the Trevino hacienda, about two hundred miles due north of Limasito. Wiley made the best of his time while I was laid by the heels, but his treachery didn't do him any good, in the end. He found the Pool, but another had been before him; old Tia Juana, herself!”
Willa's lips moved, but no sound came from them. She was praying that he would not look at her again.
”A few days before Tia Juana and the boy disappeared, the Trevino hacienda changed hands. It was sold for twenty-five thousand dollars, to one Juana Reyes.--Reyes, if you recall, was the name of the old Spaniard who owned the Pool originally and whose daughter, Dolores, was killed by the Indians on her wedding night. Reyes is also the almost forgotten surname of Tia Juana, so it looks as if the old lady had come into her own, at last. It is a mystery, of course, where she got the money to purchase the hacienda, but it may have been h.o.a.rded in her family for generations. It is possible, too, that she only then succeeded in deciphering the map, and tracing the location of the Pool from it.”
”So you and Starr Wiley both failed.” Willa spoke as if to herself.
”Not I!” Thode's eyes flashed with determination. ”I told you I had only just begun. I am going to find Tia Juana if she is above ground and buy out her claim. To her it only means the ancestral estate.
That is much, to be sure, if she has gone through her long life in poverty and want in order to h.o.a.rd her riches for its purchase, but it is only a sentimental consideration. When she learns that she has a fortune in petroleum, worthless without the money to develop it, I think she will agree to share her interest. The casa and the land about it can still be hers, we only want to drain and develop the Pool, and my chief will be strictly fair with her. The old lady will be rich beyond her wildest dreams and we will have the greatest producer known since the Dos Bocas gusher went up in flames!”
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