Free Crossroads by Max Brand Page B

the meat grewcold. Then he roused himself long enough to curse the waitress and the cook in a needless fury, although he remembered that a doctor of repute had once warned him against apoplexy. At this, trembling with alarm, he called for a wet, cold towel and reclined in a wicker chair with the towel wrapped about his feverish forehead. He began to curse cautiously, lest he should rouse himself again, the house, the servants, the country, the climate, the Americanos , the Yaquis, and Dolores. Here he paused and began to repeat the name over and over, like a musician lingering on a pleasing chord. He called for more tequila.
    Meantime the name Dolores grew more and more fixed in his mind. He discovered that it was necessary for him to see her. At first he thought of sending for her. Then he decided that he could not speak to her in the hearing of his eavesdropping house servants. Moreover, he wanted the cooler, fresher air. He went out on the verandah again to think, but the moment he crossed the threshold, he was aware of a great yellow moon pushing up above an eastern hill. He watched it with a peculiar fascination. It rolled higher until it seemed to rest for a moment like an enormous, illumined blossom, in the crest of a Spanish dagger. It rose higher, hanging poised directly above the hut of Dolores, daughter of El Tigre. Señor Oñate walked toward the hut.
    At the door he called her, his voice low and a little tremulous: “Dolores.”
    She stood a glimmering figure in the dusk. He could not see her face.
    “Come out in the night, Dolores,” he said. “It is cool. It is pleasant. Besides, you should see the yellow moon.”
    She stepped out and stood beside him. Still, he could not see her face, for the shadow of the hut struck across it.

13
The Trail
    I n Double Bend Marshal Phil Glasgow at length heard of a group of six Yaquis and their questions. He sought them out and led them in person up the ravine to the black embers of the camp fire beside which Dix Van Dyck and Jack Boone had sat. Then he turned his horse and rode back to the town. He asked no questions, and he offered no advice. Plainly they were on a blood trail, and in such affairs, as Phil Glasgow well knew, a Yaqui needs little help.
    When he left them, they were sitting in a contented semicircle in the shade of the cottonwoods, but the moment he disappeared down the valley, El Tigre rose and moved in a wide circle about the remains of the old camp. The trails were days and days old, but there had been no heavy wind or rain to obscure them. A white man might have followed the trail. To the Yaquis it was an open book in which they read. They followed El Tigre up the ravine closely, and they talked as they went, grumbling over the significant marks.
    “It is a trail of two, not one,” said Alvarado.
    “My brother is a fool!” said El Tigre, pausing to scan a mark on the ground with an eye that would distinguish between the tracks of a bobcat and a lynx at a dozen feet. “There are two, but one leads and the other follows. The first is a woman. She came here, leading her horse. A woman, for the marks are as deep at the toe as at theheel. Such is the gait of a woman. Here is the man…all heel and no toe. She came here first…led out her horse…mounted at this place…and went off softly…in the night. The man followed afterward and went by the trail of the woman. Here he spurred his horse…see where the dents of the rear hoofs are deep?…here he pulled his rein and came to a quick stop, for the four marks grind into the rock. Here he picked up the trail again.”
    “And here,” cried another, taking up the tale at a point higher on the slope of the ravine, “he trotted a few hours after she had passed.”
    They followed at the dog-trot that eats up the miles ceaselessly, perhaps from morning to night—or even for twenty-four hours at a stretch—a tireless shamble that pays no heed to the ups and downs of the road.
    “The woman is in