Starr, of the Desert

by B. M. Bower

"Third ward—down around the depot, probably," he heard a voice say guardedly on the other side of the fence. Another voice, more guarded even than the first, muttered a reply which Starr could not catch. Neither voice was recognizable, and the sentence he heard was so obvious a remark as to be practically meaningless; probably a hundred persons in town had said "Third ward," when the siren had tooted the number.

At any rate some one was there in the yard of Las Nuevas, and it would not be wise for Starr to attempt getting over the wall. He waited therefore until he heard careful footsteps moving away; whereupon he himself stole quietly to the corner, thence down the side wall to the front of the building, so that he could look across the street to where the Mexican had revealed himself for a moment in the light of a distant street lamp.

If the Mexican had been on watch there, he had left his post. In a minute Starr saw him hurrying down the unused side street, toward the angry glow that told where the fire had started. Too much temptation, Starr interpreted the fellow's desertion of his post; or else no more men were expected at Las Nuevas, and the outpost was no longer needed. Taking it for granted that a meeting had been called here, Starr reasoned from that assumption.

He waited another minute or two, watching and listening. There was nothing at the front to break the quiet or spoil the air of desertion that surrounds an empty office building at midnight. He went cautiously to the rear corner and turned there to look back at the building, watchful for any stray beam of light or any movement.

The upper story was dark as the rest of the yard and building, and Starr could almost believe that he was on the wrong track entirely, and that nothing was going on here. But he continued to stand there, loath to give up and go home with nothing accomplished.

Close beside the building and back perhaps twenty feet from the front corner, a telephone and electric light pole stood with outstretched arms, holding aloft its faintly humming wires. Starr stood looking that way for some time before it occurred to him that there was no street light near enough to send that warm, yellow glow across the second bar from the bottom. The rest of the pole was vague and shadowy, like everything else in the immediate neighborhood. The bottom of the pole he could not see at all from where he stood, it was so dark alongside the building. But that second cross-arm was lighted as from a near-by window. Yet there was no lighted window anywhere in the place.

Starr was puzzled. Being puzzled, he went slowly toward the pole, his face turned upward. The nearest street lamp was a full block away, and it would have lighted up the whole top of the pole evenly, if at all. At the foot of the pole Starr stood for a minute, still staring upward. Then he reached up, gripped the metal steps and began carefully to climb.

Before he had reached the lighted cross-arm he knew that the glow must come from a skylight; and that the skylight must be the one that had saved that hidden little office room from being dark. He was no lineman, but he knew enough to be careful about the wires, so it took him several minutes to work his way to where he could straddle a crosstree that had few wires.

Just below him and no more than twelve or fifteen feet distant was the skylight he had suspected, but before he gave that much attention, he looked across to where the fire was sending up a column of crimson smoke and bright, eddying sparks, four blocks or so away. The man left on guard would find it difficult to tear himself away from all that excitement, Starr thought satisfiedly; though if he came back he could scarcely help seeing Starr on that lighted perch, and he would undoubtedly take a shot at him if he were any man at all and had a spark of loyalty to his fellows. For Starr's business up there could not be mistaken by the stupidest greaser in the town.

With the fire to help his cause, Starr craned toward the building and looked down through the skylight. It had been partly raised for ventilation, which was needed in that little, inside room, especially since twelve men were foregathered there, and since every man in the lot was burning tobacco in some form.