The Mystery of The Barranca

you in a mi

e should have been marooned for a couple of years in a ramshackle Mexican station with only a cho

nch you'll find the other gone. If they'd just swipe each other's baggage it wouldn't be so bad. But they steal their own, then sue the company for the loss. Here, you

lowed cheeks and black-gray eyes. A trifle over medium height, the hundred and sixty pounds he ought to have carried had been reduced a good ten pounds by years of prospecting in Mexico and Arizona. This loss of flesh, however, had been more than made up by a corresponding gain in muscle. Moving a few paces ar

his slangy college utterance he proved the theory of the attraction of opposites. Bosom friends at college, it had always been understood between them that when either got his "hunch" the other should be called

t you?" he asked, offering his hand. "Didn't recognize yo

"He means the opposition I told you we might

en denounced, and so far nobody has succeeded in holding it." Looking at Billy, probably as being the more impressionable, he ran on: "The first five were Mex and as there were no pe

d so many of them blew themselves into kingdom come that he was always running shy on labor. So, as I say, he used the box for a pillow till it went off one night and distributed him all over the Barranca de Guerrero. Just how it came about of course nobody knew, nor cared, and the

Not only did he gain a general's commission during the revolutionary wars, but he's also a member of the Mexican Congress, so close to the government that he needs only to wink to get what he wants. So just about the time the Johnnies had finished development work and begun to deliver ore out here at the railroad-pre

illy. But instead of discouragement, impi

r expected anything half so good. But, say! If the mine is so rich why don't the

half a million in cattle alone. And he's your old-fashioned sort that hate the ve

-room. Well, he's our dearest friend-presented Seyd here with all of his horses, cattle, la

lance that fought with Diaz during the French war. His son by a Mexican wife married Don Luis's sister, and when he died she and her daughter came to keep the old fellow's house, for he's been a widower these twenty years. Like most of the sprigs of the best Mexican families, she was

rest. Now he put in, "We will-just as quickly as we can

nt continued: "And here's where your troubles begin. Though donkey-drivers are as thi

Seyd questioned. "Th

e outfit down with t

ersation with a ranchero at the other end of the platform, and, glancin

stien Rocha? Yes, he's

ed to get

ubt he'll do it when he knows where you're going." In a last attempt at dissuasion he added, "But if he do

onest fellow's undoubted anxiety, he said, "Do you remembe

billed to the Dutchman.

smelting expenses-it would never pay, as you say, to ship it out at present prices. But once smelted down into copper matte there's a fortune in it, as the Dutc

r game!" The a

sin over there can only be persuaded to furnish

t I turned him down rather roug

the snap of the agent's fingers brought a score of them running. Each tried to make his calling and election sure by seizing a piece of baggage. In

na Santa G

he muleteer who had asked the question, and it had no more th

ented, and was going on when a

he trouble

f amusement. Suppressing a recurrence of irritation he answered, quietly: "We wish to go to the hacienda San Nicolas, se?or, upon which

in the fire," th

no sign. "Quien sabe? Ask their blood brother, the burro. One would have little to do

all the world like a herd of frightened cattle. The big muleteer who had led the retreat returned on

ros and two riding-mules. He has only two. Ola, Mattias!" When a second muleteer had come with th

as, pausing, he then looked back his face once more changed, expressing knowledge and sarcastic amusement at th

s not

oment,

night, of course, you will stay in Chilpancin. But to-morrow? By which trail do you travel?" When Seyd answered he added a word of counsel: "I

him, they

f the waning sun the variegated color of its walls, houses, churches, merged in warm gold, glowed like a topaz in the setting of the dark hills. Paved with river cobbles and crooked as a dog's hind leg, a street fell steeply down into the barranca from whose black dep

across the windows. At the tinkle of their bells there would come a flash of Spanish eyes in the cool dusk behind the windows, and a pretty face would emerge from deep shadow to fade again before Billy's smile. The p

rich lights the vivid adobes, tinting the cold white blankets and garments of the hucksters who squatted by their displays-guavas and pineapples, cocoanuts, mangoes, alligator pears, and other fruits of the tropics which shared the same straw mat with cabbage, squash, onions, and other familiar produce of the cold N

. Looking, as they rode past, they saw a peon-whose spotless blanket shone whiter by contrast with the scarlet serape which had fallen backward across his calves-erect on his knees, arms extended in a rigid cross, a figure of deathless adoration before the V

age of the hotel whose iron-studded gates, barred windows, yard-thick walls all bespoke a life which had not yet progressed beyond the era of sieges. A runway led dow

ee main lines of travel, and they were so crowded that it was difficult to find space among the mule panniers, crates, and bundles for their tiny cooking-fires. On occasion a face, plump and darkly pretty, would bloom out of the dusk as a woman fanned the charcoal under her clay cooking-pots. Again, a leaping flame would illumine a hawk face, deeply bronzed and heavily mustached, or lend a deeper dye to the scarlet of some sleeper's serap

I tell it to my ruth, since I was well skinned by him-is a thief

an Pedro is keeping an eye for thy return eve

at he expects good oak burnin

heir own muleteers. "Where go the gringos, amigo? To Santa Gertrudis? And

uestioner, a strident tenor, rose over all. "An order from Don Sebastien? Carambar-r-r-r-a! And you go

rse in "letters" along with his mining for the sole purpose of broadening his viewpoint and widening his touch with life. Indeed, he had bent his profession to the same end, using it as a means to travel and study, in which he differed altogether from Billy, who was the mining engineer in every dimension. Where Billy saw only the externals, humors, and absurdities, and the picturesqueness of that teeming life, Seyd's subtl

m the blaze fell. "I thought I saw him-that fello

red that he lives far out. Like ourselves

pened to be in my mind. Only why shoul

f he was, it is easy to prove it. T

his head. "No, se?or, Don Sebastien is not here. He

him his orders for next day, Seyd returned to his study of the crowd.