“More or less,” agreed Pike amicably, “some of us more, some of us less. Doña Dolores probably spells politics, but Doña Jocasta is a wildcat of the sierras, and I can’t figure out any harmonious days for a man who picks two like that.”
“He doesn’t deserve harmony; no man does who isn’t true––isn’t true,” finished Billie rather lamely.
“Look here, honey child,” observed Pike, “you’ll turn man hater if you keep on working your imagination. Luz tells me you are cranky against Kit, and that the ranches are tied up in business knots tighter than I had any notion of, so you had better unload the worst you can think of on me; that’s what I’m here for. What difference do the Perez favorites make to our young lives? Neither Dolores nor Jocasta will help play the cards in our fortunes.”
Wherein Captain Pike was not of the prophets. The wells of Sonora are not so many but that he who pitches his tent near one has a view and greetings of all drifting things of the desert, and the shadowed star of Doña Jocasta of the south was leading her into the Soledad wilderness forsaken of all white men but one.
CHAPTER XII
COVERING THE TRAIL
Each minute of the long days, Rhodes worked steadily and gaily, picking out the high grade ore from the old Indian mine, and every possible night he and the burro and Tula made a trip out to the foot of the range, where they buried their treasure against the happy day when they could go out of the silent desert content for the time with what gold they could carry in secret to the border.
For two days he had watched the Soledad ranch house rather closely through the field glass, for there was more activity there than before; men in groups rode in who were not herding. He wondered if it meant a military occupation, in which case he would need to be doubly cautious when emerging from the hidden trail.