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Page 9
A half-hour later the Mexican guards appeared upon the scene, and
unbound Lane's unconscious form from the sahuaro, which the fire
had consumed to a foot of his bowed head. They deluged his face
and back, and bathed his tortured feet with the contents of their
canteens, and brought him back to life, but, alas! not to reason.
Six months later there limped out of Chihuahua hospital a
discharged patient, wry-necked, crook-backed, with drawn
features, and hair and beard streaked with gray. It was Dick
Lane, restored to old physical strength, so far as the distortion
of his spine, caused by his torture, permitted, and to the full
possession of his mental faculties. He mounted one of the
captured ponies, and rode off with the proceeds of the sales of
the others in his pocket, to purchase provisions for a return to
his prospecting.
Before plunging into the wilderness he wrote a letter:
Chihuahua, Mexico
"Mr. John Payson,
"Sweetwater Ranch,
"Florence, Arizona Territory, U.S.A.
"Dear Jack: I have been sick and out of my head in the hospital
here for the last six months. Just about the time you all were
expecting me home, I had a run in with the Apaches. And who do
you think was with them? Buck McKee, the half-breed that I ran
off the range two years ago for tongue-slitting. After I had
done for all the rest, he got me, and--well, the story's too long
to write. I rather think McKee has made off with the gold I had
cached just before the fight. I'm going back to see, and if he
did, I'll hustle around to find a buyer for one of my claims. I
don't want to sell my big mine, Jack. I tell you I struck it
rich!--but that story can wait till I get back. Your loan can't,
though, so expect to receive $3,000 by express some time before I
put in an appearance. I hope you got the mortgage renewed at the
end of the year. If my failure to show up then has caused you
trouble, you'll forgive me, old fellow, I know, under the
circumstances. I'll make it up to you. I owe you everything.
You're the best friend a man ever had. That's why I'm writing to
you instead of to Uncle Jim, for I want you to do me another
friendly service. Just break it gently to Echo Allen that I'm
alive and well though pretty badly damaged by that renegade McKee
and tell her that it wasn't my fault I wasn't home the day I
promised. She'll forgive me, I know, and be patient a while
longer. It's all for her sake I'm staying away. Give her the
letter I enclose.
"Your old bunkie,
Dick Lane"
CHAPTER II
The Heart of a Girl
Jim Allen was the sole owner and proprietor of Allen Hacienda.
His ranch, the Bar One, stretched for miles up and down the
Sweetwater Valley. Bounded on the east and west by the
foot-hills, the tract was one of the garden spots of Arizona.
Southward lay the Sweetwater Ranch, owned by Jack Payson.
Northward was the home ranch of the Lazy K, an Ishmaelitish
outfit, ever at petty war with the other settlers in the
district. It was a miscellaneous and constantly changing crowd,
recruited from rustlers from Wyoming, gamblers from California,
half-breed outlaws from the Indian Territory; in short, "bad men"
from every section of the Western country. They had a special
grudge against Allen and Payson, whom they held to be accountable
for the sudden disappearance, about a year before, of their
leader, Buck McKee, a half-breed from the Cherokee Strip.
However, no other leader had arisen equal to that masterful
spirit, and their enmity expressed itself only in such petty
depredations as changing brands on stray cattle from the Bar One
and Sweetwater Ranches, and the slitting of the tongues of young
calves, so that they would be unable to feed properly, and, as a
result, be disowned by their mothers, whereupon the Lazy K outfit
would slap its brand on them as mavericks.
Allen was a Kentuckian who had served in the Confederate Army as
one of Morgan's raiders, and so had received, by popular brevet,
the title of colonel. At the close of the war he had come to
Arizona with his young wife, Josephine, and had founded a home on
the Sweetwater. He was now one of the cattle barons of the great
Southwest. Prosperity had not spoiled him. Careless in his
attire, cordial in his manner, he was a man who was loved and
respected by his men, from the newest tenderfoot to the veteran
of the bunkhouse. His wife, however, was not so highly regarded,
for she had never been able to recognize changes in time or
location and so was in perpetual conflict with her environment.
She attempted to make the free and independent cowboys of the
Arizona plains "stand around" like the house servants of the
Kentucky Bluegrass; and she persisted in the effort to manage her
husband by the feminine artifice of weeping. In days of her
youth and beauty this had been very effective, but now that these
had passed, it was productive only of good-humored raillery from
him, and mirth from the bystanders.
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