Starr, of the Desert Part 11

He stole it because he knew that not many Americans ever bought the paper, and he feared that the hombre in charge might wonder why an American should pay a nickel for a copy of _Las Nuevas_. As it happened, the hombre in charge was looking into a mirror cunningly placed for the guarding of stock from pilferers, and he saw Starr steal the paper. Also he saw Starr slip a dime under a stack of magazines where it would be found later on. So he wondered a great deal more than he would have done if Starr had bought the paper, but Starr did not know that.

Starr went back to his cabin by way of the arroyo and the hole in the manger. When he unlocked the door and went in, he had an odd feeling that some one had been there in his absence. He stood still just inside the door and inspected everything, trying to remember just where his clothes had been scattered, where he had left his hat, just how his blankets had been flung back on the bed when he jumped up to see what had startled Rabbit; every detail, in fact, that helps to make up the general look of a room left in disorder.

He did remember, for his memory had been well trained for details. He knew that his hat had been on the table with the front toward the wall.

It was there now, just as he had flung it down. He knew that his pillow had been dented with the shape of his head, and that it had lain askew on the bed; it was just as it had been. Everything--his boots, his dark coat spread over the back of the chair, his trousers across the foot of the bed--everything was the same, yet the feeling persisted.

Starr was no more imaginative than he needed to be for the work he had to do. He was not in the least degree nervous over that work. Yet he was sure some one had been in the room during his absence, and he could not tell why he was sure. At least, for ten minutes and more he could not tell why. Then his eyes lighted upon a cigarette stub lying on the hearth of the little cookstove in one corner of the room. Starr always used "wheat straw" papers, which were brown. This cigarette had been rolled in white paper. He picked it up and discovered that one end was still moist from the lips of the smoker, and the other end was still warm from the fire that had half consumed it. Starr gave an enlightened sniff and knew it was his olfactory nerves that had warned him of an alien presence there; for the tobacco in this cigarette was not the brand he smoked.

He stood thinking it over; puzzling again over the mystery of their suspicion of him. He tried to recall some careless act, some imprudent question, an ill-considered remark. He was giving up the riddle again when that trained memory of his flashed before him a picture that, trivial as it was in itself, yet was as enlightening as the white paper of the cigarette on the stove hearth.

Two days before, just after his last arrival in San Bonito, he had sent a wire to a certain man in El Paso. The message itself had not been of very great importance, but the man to whom he had sent it had no connection whatever with the Meat Company. He was, in fact, the go-between in the investigation of the Secret Service. Through him the War Department issued commands to Starr and his fellows, and through him it kept in touch with the situation. Starr had used two code words and a number in that message.

And, he now distinctly remembered, the girl who had waited upon him was dark, with a Spanish cast of features. When she had counted the words and checked the charge and pushed his change across to him, she had given him a keen, appraising look from under her lashes, though the smile she sent with it had given the glance a feminine and wholly flattering interpretation. Starr remembered that look now and saw in it something more than coquetry. He remembered, too, that he had glanced back from the doorway and caught her still looking after him; and that he had smiled, and she had smiled swiftly in return and had then turned away abruptly to her work. To her work? Starr remembered now that she had turned and spoken to a sulky-faced messenger boy who was sitting slumped down on the curve of his back with his tightly b.u.t.toned tunic folded up to his armpits so that his hands could burrow to the very bottom of his pockets.

He had looked up, muttered something, reluctantly removed himself from the chair, and started away. The boy, too, had the Mexican look.

Well, at any rate, he knew now how the thing had started. He heaved a sigh of relief and threw himself down on the bed, wadding the pillow into a hard ball under the nape of his neck and unfolding the Mexican newspaper. He had intended to move camp; but now that they had begun to trail him, he decided to stay where he was and give them a run for their money, as he put it.

Starr could read Spanish well enough for ordinary purposes. He went carefully through _Las Nuevas_, from war news to the local advertis.e.m.e.nts. There was nothing that could even be twisted into a message of hidden meaning to the initiated. _Las Nuevas_ was what it called itself: _The News_. It was exactly as innocuous as he had believed it to be. Its editorial page, even, was absolutely ba.n.a.l in its servility to the city, county, state and national policy.

"That's a h.e.l.l of a thing to steal!" grumbled Starr, and threw the paper disgustedly from him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

STARR FINDS SOMETHING IN A SECRET ROOM

That day Starr rode out into the country and looked at a few head of cows and steers that a sickly American wanted to sell so he could go East for his health (there being in most of us some peculiar psychological leaning toward seeking health afar). Starr went back to town afterwards and made Rabbit comfortable in the corral, reasoning that if he were going to be watched, he would be watched no matter where he went; but he ate his supper in the dining room of the Plaza Hotel, and sat in the lobby talking with a couple of facetious drummers until the mechanical piano in the movie show across the street began to play.

He went to the show, sat through it patiently, strolled out when it was over, and visited a saloon or two. Then, when he thought his evening might be considered well rounded out with harmless diversions, he went out to his cabin, following the main street but keeping well in the shadow as though he wished to avoid observation.

He had reason to believe that some one followed him out there, which did not displease him much. He lighted his lamp and fussed around for half an hour or so before he blew out the light and went to bed.

At three o'clock in the morning, with a wind howling in from the mountains, Starr got up and dressed in the dark, fumbling for a pair of "sneakers" he had placed beside his bed. He let himself out into the corral, being careful to keep close to the wall of the house until he reached the high board fence. Here, too, he had to feel his way because of the pitchy blackness of the night; and if the rattling wind prevented him from hearing any footsteps that might be behind him, it also covered the slight sound of his own progress down the fence to the shed. But he did not think he would be seen or followed, for he had been careful to oil the latch and hinges of his door before he went to bed; and he would be a faithful spy indeed who s.h.i.+vered through the whole night, watching a man who apparently slept unsuspectingly and at peace.

Down the hole from the manger Starr slid, and into the arroyo bottom. He stumbled over a can of some sort, but the wind was rattling everything movable, so he merely swore under his breath and went on. He was not a range man for nothing, and he found his way easily to the adobe house with LAS NUEVAS over the door, and the adobe wall with the plank gate that had been closed.

It was closed now, and the house itself was black and silent. Starr stooped and gave a jump, caught the top of the wall with his hooked fingers, went up and straddled the top where it was pitch black against the building. For that matter, it was nearly pitch black whichever way one looked, that night. He sat there for five minutes, listening and straining his eyes into the enclosure. Somewhere a piece of corrugated iron banged against a board. Once he heard a cat meow, away back at the rear of the lot. He waited through a comparative lull, and when the wind whooped again and struck the building with a fresh blast, Starr jumped to the ground within the yard.

He crouched for a minute, a shot-loaded quirt held b.u.t.t forward in his hand. He did not want to use a gun unless he had to, and the loaded end of a good quirt makes a very efficient subst.i.tute for a blackjack. But there was no movement save the wind, so presently he followed the wall of the house down to the corner, stood there listening for awhile and went on, feeling his way rapidly around the entire yard as a blind man feels out a room that is strange to him.

He found the garage, with a door that kept swinging to and fro in the wind, banging shut with a slam and then squealing the hinges as it opened again with the suction. He drew a breath of relief when he came to that door, for he knew that any man who happened to be on guard would have fastened it for the sake of his nerves if for nothing else.

When he was sure that the place was deserted for the night, Starr went back to the garage and went inside. He fastened the door shut behind him and switched on his pocket searchlight to examine the place. If he had expected to see the mysterious black car there he was disappointed, for the garage was empty--which perhaps explained the swinging door, that had been left open in the evening when there was no wind. Small comfort in that for Starr, for it immediately occurred to him that the car would probably return before daylight if it had gone after dark.

He turned his hand slowly, painting the walls with a brush of brilliant light. "Huh!" he grunted under his breath. For there in a far corner were four Silvertown cord tires with the dust of the desert still clinging to the creases of the lined tread. Near-by, where they had been torn off in haste and flung aside, were the paper wrappings of four other tires, supposedly new.

So they--he had no more definite term by which to call them--they had sensed the risk of those unusual tires, and had changed for others of a more commonly-used brand! Starr wondered if some one had seen him looking at tire-tracks, the young Mexican he had met on the side street, perhaps.

Or the Mexican garage man may have caught him studying that track by the filling-pump.

"Well," Starr summed up the significance of the discovery, "the game's open; now we'll get action."

He glanced down to make sure that he had not left any tracks on the floor and was glad he had not worn his boots. Then he snapped off the light, went out, and left the door swinging and banging as it had been before.

If he learned no more, at least he was paid for the trip.

He went straight to the rear door of the building, taking no pains to conceal his footsteps. The wind, he knew, would brush them out completely with the sand and dust it sent swirling around the yard with every gust.

As he had hoped, the door was not bolted but locked with a key, so he let himself in with one of the pa.s.s keys he carried for just such work as this. He felt at the windows and saw that the blinds were down, and turned on his light.

The place had all the greasy dinginess of the ordinary print shop. The presses were here, and the motor that operated them. Being a bi-weekly and not having much job printing to do, it was evident that _Las Nuevas_ did not work overtime. Things were cleaned up for the night and ready for the next day's work. It all looked very commonplace and as innocent as the paper it produced.

Starr went on slowly, examining the forms, the imperfect first proofs of circulars and placards that had been placed on hook files. AVISO! stared up at him in big, black type from the top of many small sheets, with the following notices of sales, penalties attached for violations of certain ordinances, and what not. But there was nothing that should not be there, nothing that could be construed as seditionary in any sense of the word.

Still, some person or persons connected with this place had found it expedient to change four perfectly good and quite expensive tires for four new and perfectly commonplace ones, and the only explanation possible was that the distinctive tread of the expensive ones had been observed. There must, Starr reasoned, be something else in this place which it would be worth his while to discover. He therefore went carefully up the grimy stairway to the rooms above.

These were offices of the comfortless type to be found in small towns.

Bare floors, stained with tobacco juice and the dust of the street.

Bare desks and tables, some of them unpainted, homemade affairs, all of them cheap and old. A stove in the larger office, a few wooden-seated armchairs. Starr took in the details with a flick here and there of his flashlight that he kept carefully turned away from the green-shaded windows.

News items, used and unused, he found impaled on desk files. Bills paid and unpaid he found also. But in the first search he found nothing else, nothing that might not be found in any third-rate newspaper establishment. He stood in the middle room--there were three in a row, with an empty, loft-like room behind--and considered where else he could search.

He went again to a closet that had been built in with boards behind the chimney. At first glance this held nothing but decrepit brooms, a battered spittoon, and a small pile of greasewood cut to fit the heater in the larger room; but Starr went in and flashed his light around the wall. He found a door at the farther end, and he knew it for a door only when he pa.s.sed his hands over the wall and felt it yield. He pushed it open and went into another room evidently built across one end of the loft, a room cunningly concealed and therefore a room likely to hold secrets.

He hitched his gun forward a little, pushed the door shut behind him, and began to search that room. Here, as in the outer offices, the first superficial examination revealed nothing out of the way. But Starr did not go at things superficially. First the desk came under close scrutiny.

There were no letters; they were too cautious for that, evidently. He looked in the little stove that stood near the wall where the chimney went up in the closet, and saw that the ashes consisted mostly of charred paper. But the last ones deposited therein had not yet been lighted, or, more exactly, they had been lighted hastily and had not burned except around the edges. He lifted out the one on top and the one beneath it.

They were two sheets of copy paper scribbled closely in pencil. The first was ent.i.tled, with heavy underscoring that signified capitals, "Souls in Bondage." This sounded interesting, and Starr put the papers in his pocket. The others were envelopes addressed to _Las Nuevas_; there was no more than a handful of papers in all.

In a drawer of the desk, which he opened with a skeleton key, he found many small leaflets printed in Mexican. Since they were headed ALMAS DE CAUTIVERO, he took one and hoped that it would not be missed. There were other piles of leaflets in other drawers, and he helped himself to a sample of each, and relocked the drawers carefully. But search as he might, he could find nothing that identified any individual, or even pointed to any individual as being concerned in this propaganda work; nor could he find any mention of the Mexican Alliance.

He went out finally, let the door swing behind him as it seemed accustomed to do, climbed through a window to the veranda that bordered all these rooms like a jutting eyebrow, and slid down a corner post to the street. It was close to dawn, and Starr had no wish to be found near the place; indeed, he had no wish to be found away from his cabin if any one came there with the breaking of day to watch him.

As he had left the cabin, so he returned to it. He went back to bed and lay there until sunrise, piecing together the sc.r.a.ps of information he had gleaned. So far, he felt that he was ahead of the game; that he had learned more about the Alliance than the Alliance had learned about him.

As soon as the light was strong enough for him to read without a lamp, he took from his pocket the papers he had gleaned from the stove, spread out the first and began to decipher the handwriting. And this is what he finally made out:

"Souls in Bondage:

"The plundering plutocrats who suck the very life blood of your mother country under the guise of the development of her resources, are working in harmony with the rich brigands north of the border to plunder you further, and to despoil the fair land you have helped to win from the wilderness.

"Shall strong men be content in their slavery to the greed of others?

Rise up and help us show the plunderers that we are men, not slaves. Let this shameless persecution of your mother country cease!

"American bandits would subjugate and annex the richest portion of Mexico. Why should not Mexico therefore reclaim her own? Why not turn the tables and annex a part of the vast territory stolen from her by the octopus arms of our capitalist cla.s.s?

"We are a proud people and we never forget. Are we a cowardly people who would cringe and yield when submission means infamy?

"Awake! Strike one swift, successful blow for freedom and your bleeding mother land.

"Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona were stolen from Mexico, just as the riches of her mines are being stolen from her to-day. Sons of Mexico, you can help her reclaim her own. Will you stand by and see her further despoiled? Let your voices rise in a mighty cry for justice! Let your arms be strong to strike a blow for the right!