Now ensued confusion great and dire. Every man on the ranch, except the cook and Abel Dorales and the eminent scientist, shared the general exodus. Dorales openly expressed profound disgust for gods, for Mackintavers, and for the whole accursed business; having assumed responsibility for the safe return of the two wrinkled, withered old Cochiti bucks, he loaded them into the ranch flivver and set out for Socorro and the main line of the railroad. Sandy and Old Man Durfee were gone with the big car.
The professor, left alone, secured a volume of scientific reports and settled himself in comfort on the wide, screened veranda. The noon meal had not been pleasant. The afternoon was hot and dusty. Presently the scientific gentleman slept.
Just when his slumbers had deepened into snoring somnolence, the archæologist was aroused by a sonorous bass voice that boomed like a bell. Startled, he sat up. He first visualized a buckboard close at hand, within a dozen feet of the veranda—a strange thing, for he well knew that natives of the country would have driven their teams to the corrals. Upon the seat of the buckboard was a suitcase.
It was a small wicker suitcase, a battered little yellow suitcase with loose ends of wicker torn and protruding from its faded surface; it was a suitcase manifestly third or fourth-hand, cheap in the first place, and now absolutely contemptible. It looked more like a lunch basket than a suitcase.
Then the professor was aware of a tall man, a large, shaggy-bearded man, who stood at the screen door of the veranda and spoke in sonorous accents.
“Sir, it grieves me thus to break your slumber, but I am searching with such power as lies within my soul for one named Mackintavers. I charge you, if you be fair Scotia’s son and him whom I do seek, declare yourself!”
“Bless my soul!” exclaimed the scientist. “Do I gather that you are looking for Mr. Mackintavers?”
“Such indeed are my intent and purpose,” declaimed Thady Shea.
“He’s gone. Everyone’s gone.” The professor inspected this specimen of humanity with swiftly growing interest. “They’ll be back presently; things are a bit upset. Won’t you come in? Better take your team over to the corrals.”
The scientist rose and introduced himself. Thady Shea solemnly gave his abbreviated cognomen and stated that, since he had hired the team at Magdalena and expected to return almost at once, the horses could stay where they were. He then entered the screen veranda, shook hands, and with a sigh sat himself down.