WHEN Dick proceeded to follow Pierre Luzon he found that the ponies had already trotted away through the semidarkness, evidently quite capable on their own account of finding their accustomed stable. Leading the way across the cavern, Pierre entered a corridor at the far end of which bright lights were burning. Soon, Dick, to his great wonderment, found himself in a comfortably, almost luxuriously furnished apartment.
There were big thick rugs on the floor, and the rock walls were completely hidden by tapestries. The dining table in the centre was set with napery, china, glass, cutlery and silverware that would have done credit to a first-class hotel. Above swung a bronze lamp of antique pattern. Another table was laden with books, newspapers and magazines. In one corner gleamed the snow-white counterpane of a massive bedstead built of oak in Old Mission style. Here and there portable oil stoves were burning, diffusing a genial warmth throughout the grotto.
Pierre watched the guest’s look of bewilderment as he gazed around him.
“You will be very comfortable here,” said the Frenchman. “I have orders to attend to all your wants.”
“Orders, from whom?” asked Dick abruptly. “After breakfast you will know. I have one letter for you in my pocket.”
With characteristic philosophy Dick accepted the situation. The very mention of breakfast gave a keener edge to an already sharply whetted appetite. Pierre departed and presently returned with a superb sirloin steak sizzling on a hot platter. Under his arm was tucked a bottle of wine. As he set down the latter, Dick noted that it was dusty and cobwebby, as if it had emerged from some ancient cellar.
“Zis is not ze vintage of California,” remarked Pierre, as he drew the cork. “It is rare old Burgundy—all ze way from my beloved France.”
“La belle France,” murmured Dick. “I spent a year there, Pierre, most of the time in Paris.”
“Ah, monsieur knows France and Paris,” exclaimed the old man in great delight. “Zen you speak French, too?”
“Un peu,” laughed Dick. “Mais je fais beaucoup de fautes, mon ami.”
“Non, non, monsieur,” cried Pierre, breaking into voluble French. “Your accent is perfect—it is delightful to hear my native language again. We shall be great friends, Mr. Willoughby. Already I am your devoted servant.” He bowed deferentially, as he held Dick’s chair ready for him to be seated.
“You will breakfast with me, Pierre?” asked Dick, still in his best French.
“No, no. I wait on monsieur. I shall breakfast in good time.”
Pierre was not to be persuaded to take a place at the table, so Dick sat down in solitary state and was served in lordly fashion.
With the demi-tasse of black coffee at the close of the meal came a box of cigars—cigars fit for a prince, as Dick knew from the first fragrant whiff.
The table was now cleared and Pierre ready to withdraw. He had taken a letter from his pocket and was holding it in his hand. But Dick, warmed and fed and supremely contented, was watching the ascending rings of tobacco smoke.
“Do you know, Pierre,” he said between complacent puffs, “that I was one of the bunch that helped to get you out of San Quentin?” He had lapsed into English.
“Oh, yes, I know,” replied Pierre, also dropping his French. “Ze five men who made up ze purse—I am very grateful to you all.”
“Then what about the hidden treasure?”
“Ah, I was to show ze hidden treasure. But one great change come about. I made one big mistake.”
“Then the story of all this gold was a frame-up, was it?” laughed Willoughby.
“No, no,” protested Pierre earnestly. “Ze cave—you are here in ze cave, although you do not know ze secret hiding place. Ze treasure, it is here, too. But I can no longer show ze gold, for ze man to whom it all belong he is not dead—he is alive.”
“Whom do you mean?”
“Don Manuel de Valencia—him you call ze White Wolf.”
“Great guns! So he has appeared again. The newspaper stories were all wrong?”
“Zat is how I made my mistake. But I did not know until I came back to Tehachapi. Ze White Wolf is alive. It is he who has brought you here as his guest. Now you will read zis letter, and zen all things you will comprehend.”
Pierre laid the missive on the damask table cloth in front of Dick. The latter fastened his eyes on it in speechless surprise. Before he recovered himself Pierre, lifting the tray of empty dishes, had noiselessly disappeared.
“Mystery upon mystery,” murmured Dick as he broke the seal. The letter was a brief one, and began without any of the usual forms of personal address:
“You are in safe and honorable keeping. Have no care. Nor need you worry about your friends—they will be informed of your safety.
“Just as soon as possible the real slayer of Marshall Thurston will be revealed. You will be completely exonerated and can then return to the world, a free man. By this means a certain young lady will be spared from the gossip and the publicity which, although she has been brave enough to say it does not matter, would bring for her annoyance and pain.
“If she is dear to you, as the writer of this letter believes, you will help to shield her from vulgar curiosity by remaining quietly where you are until the proper hour for your deliverance comes. It is only necessary for you to give your word of honor to Pierre Luzon that you will make no attempt to escape or reveal your whereabouts. Your trustfulness will be rewarded—this is the solemn promise of
“Don Manuel de Valencia,
“Your friend.”
Dick read and re-read the strange message. All at once he became conscious that Pierre Luzon was again standing by his chair. Their eyes met.
“Does Mr. Willoughby give ze promise required?” asked Pierre.
Dick rose to his feet and extended his hand.
“I promise, Pierre. You have my word of honor. The letter says that is enough.”
“I have read ze letter before it was sealed. We all know Mr. Willoughby’s word is enough—it is as good as one gold bond.”
“I’d do anything for Merle Farnsworth,” continued Dick, carried away by his fervid emotion. “I would die for her, if need be, to save her from one moment’s pain.”
“Don Manuel he know that,” replied Pierre. Dick paused and his look changed.
“How the devil does he know I love the girl?”
“Ah!” The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Ah! Don Manuel he know everything. But now, I am under orders not to speak. Over there you will find ze latest newspapers, sir,” he went on, pointing to the table laden with literature, “and every few days more will be brought for you—not only ze newspapers of Los Angeles and San Francisco, but also, ze newspapers of New York and London and Paris, all of which monsieur is accustomed to read.”
“Great Scott, you seem to know,” exclaimed Dick in a low voice.
Pierre continued placidly:
“And you play chess. There is a box of chess—échecs we call it in France, you will remember. I too play ze game. Don Manuel and I used to spend many hours over ze board. After I have had my breakfast, I, Pierre Luzon, challenge you to one game of chess.”
“Be it so,” laughed Dick. “But you must be hungry, man. For heaven’s sake go and eat. We’ll yarn later on. Meanwhile, I’ll have a glance through the newspapers.”
Dick handled the newspapers with renewed surprise—the very New York papers he was accustomed to receive regularly, also the old familiar. Times Weekly from London and the Paris Figaro to which he had subscribed ever since the old Quartier Latin days! The same with the magazines—all his favorites were on the table.
“Well, I’ll be blowed! Is it the guileless Sing Ling whom Don Manuel has been tapping for information? This certainly looks like home,” and again he glanced over the table. He looked at the titles of the books—several of the latest novels, a volume on socialism, another on the history of architecture.
“Seems to know my book tastes, too. I won’t be lonesome, that’s certain. Well, I can’t do better than make a start with the newspapers. I’ve fallen quite behind the times.”
He stretched himself out on a long rattan chair, and started with a Los Angeles daily. He had read lazily on for nearly an hour, when there came from his lips a little cry of surprise.
Starting up into a sitting posture, Dick again perused the paragraph that had excited his special interest.
It was an announcement stating that an ideal city was about to be built in the Tehachapi valley, and that a prize of ten thousand dollars was to be awarded to the designer of the best plans for laying out such a town. Reference was made to an advertisement on another page giving the details and the rules of the competition. To this Dick eagerly turned.
The advertisement set forth that the model city was to be located somewhere near the centre of San Antonio Rancho, that the land was traversed by the state highway, by two railroads, by two electric power lines and two oil-carrying pipe lines, also the great Owen’s River aqueduct that supplied Los Angeles, some two hundred miles away, with water from the high Sierras. It was further stated that the entire ranch was to be subdivided into small tracts, and that already hundreds of applicants were waiting to make choice of home sites just so soon as the survey work was completed and the land thrown open to selection.
The plans required, and for which the prize of ten thousand dollars was offered, were to show the finest landscape effects, the most impressive and convenient location of public buildings, the most attractive ideas for bringing into being a veritable ideal city provided with all the most modern conveniences and sanitary equipment.
“By gad, I’d like to have a shot at that,” murmured Willoughby as he lay back in his chair and meditated.
After a time he picked up the London journal, and the very first thing that met his eye was the identical advertisement on the back of the cover. He rose and began to search through the week’s file of the Figaro, and there again he found the announcement of the contest. He was too keenly excited now for more reading. He began to pace the chamber. What a clever head had planned all this world-wide publicity!
“That Los Angeles bunch of fellows are certainly great. They are evidently going into this thing right. Doubtless they are determined to build the ideal—the model—city of California. They want the best brains of all lands to help beautify the place. Gee! but I’d like to be in this contest game. But perhaps it would be presumption on my part. Yet, who knows the country better than I do? When it comes to landscape effects, I’m Johnny-on-the-spot all right. And they’re in a hurry—only sixty days for the drawings. Unusual, such a short time. But I guess they’re going to make the dust fly without a week’s unnecessary delay. They are certainly live wires—they began by getting old Ben Thurston on the run.”
He was chuckling to himself at the thought when Pierre reappeared.
“Pierre, old fellow,” cried Dick, “would you be able to get me a drawing board, a box of instruments, india ink, water-colors, drawing paper, and so on?”
“What are you going to do?” asked the old man with a smile. “Do you think you are again in ze Quartier Latin, Mr. Willoughby?”
“No. But while I’m here I’m going back to the old Quartier Latin life, that’s a cinch. Can you buy me that stuff?” he added, diving into his hip pocket.
But he had forgotten—he had come out of jail, and his personal possessions had been left behind.
Pierre Luzon, however, had interpreted both the gesture and the thought that had prompted it.
“You need no money here, Mr. Willoughby,” he said. “My orders are to get you everything you call for. Write all you need on a piece of paper. I send a trusty messenger, and we have ze drawing paper, ze instruments, ze ink and ze paints here very soon—yes, very soon.”
“Then, by thunder, I’m going to win that ten-thousand-dollar prize.”
“But she is worth millions of dollars.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ze young lady—she very rich young lady, Miss Merle.”
Dick laughed.
“Oh, that’s quite another prize, Pierre,” he replied. “And if she is so very rich, as you say, why that puts her further out of my reach than ever.”
Pierre nodded his head determinedly.
“If I was you, Mr. Willoughby, ze prize I would try to win is ze beautiful young lady.”
When Pierre had gone, Dick again lay back in the long chair. But he was day-dreaming and love-dreaming now, wondering whether Merle Farnsworth really cared for him, whether he might dare whisper to her the story of his passionate love.
PUBLIC excitement had been running high over the approaching trial of Dick Willoughby, but his delivery from jail by the masked night-riders came as the culminating climax. Mystery and romance were piling up. Despite the strength of the circumstantial evidence, the sudden fate that had overtaken the young heir to San Antonio rancho had been shrouded with uncertainty; no witness had seen the actual doing of the murderous deed. The sensational arrest of Dick Willoughby had been followed by his still more sensational disappearance; for he seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth—he had been spirited to some place of concealment to which there was not the slightest clue, while also the identity of his rescuers remained a profound enigma.
All sorts of speculations were rife, and it was small wonder that the name of the famous bandit, Don Manuel, came to be revived. This was just the sort of audacious work the White Wolf would have gloried in—breaking into a prison, defying the authorities, leaving behind him a trail of mystery and vague terror. But shrewd old-timers pointed out that Don Manuel had never in his whole career helped a gringo—that his hand had been against every American, and that in his earlier days at all events he had killed ruthlessly, out of sheer lust for vengeance against the race of newcomers who had despoiled him of his ancestral acres. What reason, therefore, could he have had to help Dick Willoughby to liberty? Even if it had been the outlaw’s hand that had pulled the trigger against the son of his hated enemy, Ben Thurston, little would he have cared if a score of gringos had come to their end, justly or unjustly, as an aftermath of the tragedy.
Old Ben Thurston had discussed this very question with himself. The slaying of his only son, the clever business deal that had called his own tricky and dishonest bluff and lost him his principality, the sight of his herds being driven away, the approaching eviction from his home—all these events crowding one upon the other had exasperated him beyond measure and completed the change of the already grouchy, disgruntled man into a veritable wild beast snapping and snarling at everyone. Yet his mind was completely obsessed by the idea that it was Dick Willoughby, and Dick Willoughby alone, who had shot his son, so there was no room in his small and obfuscated brain for any seriously renewed apprehension that his old enemy, the White Wolf, had come to life again.
Dick’s escape from jail almost gave Ben Thurston a fit of apoplexy. It was the sleuth, Leach Sharkey, who alone of those around him ventured to break the news. After his first paroxysm of wrath, Thurston paced the room like a caged animal. He had begun to make a confidant of this man, his constant attendant, the protector with the handy guns in his hip pockets on whom he had come to rely night and day, the one associate who phlegmatically endured his irritable moods and abusive language.
So, in Leach Sharkey’s presence, Thurston, as he walked to and fro, spoke his thoughts aloud.
“Damn all pretty faces, anyhow. First and last they have cost me a fine sum. And now it is a pretty face that has cost me my boy’s life. It’s hell, that’s what it is. But I will have my revenge. I’ll hang Dick Willoughby with my own hands if necessary—even if it is the last act of my life I’ll have his neck stretched for him.”
He was glaring down at the sleuth, and the pause seemed to call for some reply.
“Well, he’s given us the slip for the present,” Sharkey ventured. Then he caught the gathering fury in the other’s eyes, and hurriedly went on: “But there is no question in the world we’ll run the scoundrel down. I myself will shoot him like the dog he is the moment I lay my two eyes on him.”
“Well, don’t waste your breath telling me you are going to do it,” growled Thurston. “Hunt him down. Take all the money you need. Get all the men you can. Search every canyon. Guard every road out of the hill country. And don’t be misled by that damn fool talk about the White Wolf of which you’ve been telling me. That cursed outlaw is dead—dead as a herring. I ran the story of his death to earth—stood on his very grave in the potters’ field at Seattle. Dick Willoughby’s the outlaw now. Get him at any cost. Get him, or, by God, lose your own job, Leach Sharkey. Do you follow me?”
“Oh, I follow you,” replied the sleuth, a sardonic smile still further exposing the teeth that were the most prominent feature of his face and at all times gave him a hyena-like appearance. “I’ll get him, make no mistake, Mr. Thurston. Just draw me that check, and I’ll have twenty more men out on the range before morning.”
At the store, Dick Willoughby’s disappearance was for days the sole topic of conversation. One morning Tom Baker and Buck Ashley were gossiping together.
“What beats me,” remarked the storekeeper, “is that Chester Munson wears such a spry look. He was Dick’s closest chum, yet he don’t seem to be one bit anxious.”
“Oh, he’s got the word, make no mistake,” replied Tom. “Although the lieutenant is as close as wax, he knows Dick’s all right, for sure. And I’m told that up at La Siesta, where Dick has his girl, you know, they’re still a-playin’ the pianner and the fiddle all the time. Mark my words—there’s been some wireless telephone at work. Munson don’t worry, his lady friends don’t worry, so I begin to think we’re a couple of derned old fools to fret ourselves on Dick’s account.”
“It’s about Pierre Luzon I’m frettin’ most,” Buck Ashley rejoined. “To think that that damned Frenchman should have done us in the eye, got clean away and robbed us of our share of the buried treasure—that’s what worries me, Tom Baker. And you’ll allow now you made a mess of things by not havin’ the old convict shackled to the bedpost.”
“A mess of things!” cried the sheriff, rising anger in his voice and eyes. “You won’t keep your mouth shut till I teach you—”
But just then there was the clatter of hoofs outside, and Tom stopped in the middle of his sentence. A moment later Munson and Jack Rover entered in a state of visible excitement. Munson carried in his arms a rotund canvas sack tied at the neck. The package was not very big, but clearly of considerable weight.
“Great Caesar,” exclaimed the lieutenant, without pausing to give any greeting. “A most surprising thing has happened. When I awoke this morning I found this bag lying on my table. And what do you think it contains?” As he asked the question he dumped the sack on the counter with a heavy thud.
“You’ve got us guessin’,” drawled Tom.
“Ten thousand, five hundred dollars in gold!” announced Munson.
“Good Lord!” ejaculated the sheriff in great surprise.
Munson went on:
“Five thousand dollars are for the French warder at San Quentin who smuggled Pierre Luzon’s letter out of the prison, and the balance is for the syndicate.”
“What syndicate?” gasped Buck, for the moment quite bewildered.
“The Hidden Treasure Syndicate, of course,” exclaimed Jack Rover. “Pierre Luzon has sent each man back the hundred dollars he put up to get him out of the pen, and five thousand dollars extra to divide among us.”
Buck and Tom sprang simultaneously to their feet.
“Hooroosh!” shouted the sheriff. “I always knew there was no yellow streak in old Pierre Luzon.”
“And I always said I liked him, too,” observed Buck. “But come into the parlor, boys,” he went on, with a cautious look around. “Let’s count the money.”
“And divvy it up,” added Tom eagerly. “Gosh ‘lmighty, boys! I’ve never yet seen a thousand dollars in gold at one time outside a bank cashier’s window. And to think there’s that amount cornin’ to me right now!”
“One thousand, one hundred, pal, to be exact,” laughed Jack Rover, lifting the package and following the storekeeper into the sanctum beyond the counter.
The gold was in United States twenty-dollar pieces, bearing dates which showed they had been minted more than twenty years ago.
“Some of Joaquin Murietta’s loot,” remarked Jack Rover, when attention had been drawn to this detail.
“No,” observed Tom Baker, holding up the coin he had been examining, “Murietta wasn’t alive when this ‘ere gold piece came from the mint. This is some of Don Manuel’s stuff.”
“The White Wolf!” exclaimed Munson.
“Yes, the White Wolf,” continued the sheriff. “So if the White Wolf ain’t dead, as Pierre declared that night—” Tom gazed at the bedroom door as if the spectral figure might reappear—“he’s honorin’ the Frenchie’s sight draft, that’s sure.”
“I see,” said Munson. “He is paying the five thousand dollars old Pierre promised in his letter if he was helped to freedom and five thousand dollars besides.”
“Precisely,” Tom Baker replied. “But if the White Wolf is dead, as most folks say, then the Frenchie’s got the key to the treasure vault, all right.”
“So we’ve got to get him back here again, boys,” murmured Buck, rubbing his hands while his eyes feasted upon the heap of gold. “I don’t mind boardin’ Pierre Luzon for a spell, and he can have all the bourbon he wants.”
“Till he tells us where Guadalupe gets her nuggets,” grinned Jack. “But you’ve forgotten to show ‘em, Munson, the card that came with the coin.”
“Oh, yes,” rejoined Munson, drawing a small piece of pasteboard from his pocket. “It is brief enough. Luzon gives his countryman’s family address in Marseilles where the first five thousand dollars is to be mailed. Then he writes down our five names, Dick Willoughby’s first, and says the five of us are to share equally.” He passed the card to Tom Baker for inspection, and went on: “Jack and I are going to ride over to Bakersfield, get the French bank draft and put Dick’s money in the bank along with our own.”
“Where’s Dick?” asked Buck, with a quick uplift of his eyes into Munson’s face.
But the latter was not to be betrayed into divulging any information that might be in his possession.
“I have not the slightest idea,” he replied airily. “But I feel sure Dick’s all right. He is the sort of fellow well able to look after himself. Meanwhile, Jack and I will attend to his financial interests,” he added with a laugh, as he began to count the gold.
In silence the task proceeded, five thousand dollars first being set aside, and then the balance divided into five separate heaps. When all were satisfied as to the correctness of the distribution, Munson swept the gold back into the sack, except for the two little piles allotted to Ashley and Baker. Then he securely tied the package, ready for the ride to Bakersfield.
“Buck will lock mine in his safe, boys,” exclaimed Tom Baker. “Gosh me, but I’ll want to look at it two or three times a day.”
“Oh, I’m drivin’ over to the bank myself tomorrer,” declared Buck. “I’ve got a bit more to add to this pile.”
“A few handfuls of nuggets, I suppose,” laughed Rover.
“Well, I’ll allow Guadalupe always pays her grocery bills. But this ‘ere store ain’t goin’ to be a safe deposit vault, not on your demed life, with bandits around again. So you’d better arrange to come with me to town tomorrer, Tom.”
“You’ll need me to help you home, perhaps,” grinned the sheriff. “But, I say, Munson, you ain’t told us yet how this sack came to be delivered at your place.”
“There’s a proper mystery for you!” cried Munson. “As I said before, I found the bag this morning, lying on my dressing table. Sing Ling was the only one besides myself in the shack, and he never heard a sound all night.”
“You’re still in Dick’s old home?” asked Buck. “Yes, but I leave tomorrow—have notice to quit, for some surveyor chaps are coming in. I’m moving up to Mr. Robles’ place. He wants me to catalog the books in his library.”
“And Sing Ling?” queried Tom.
“He goes, too. You see, Mr. Robles needs a crackerjack cook, now I’ll be boarding with him,” Munson laughed, gaily. “You don’t happen to have a porterhouse steak about the place, Buck?”
“I can heat you up a can of pork and beans.”
“Nothing doing! Jack and I wouldn’t spoil our appetites with such truck as that. We’re going to set up a chicken dinner in Bakersfield.”
“Chicken and champagne,” chimed in Jack, as he swung the sack over his shoulder.
“You’re beginning to get big bugs these days,” called out the storekeeper as the young men left the room. “Guess, Tom,” he went on, turning to the sheriff, “we could do with a jolt of Kentucky.”
“Make it a bottle of bourbon,” gurgled Tom, “to remind us of our absent friend.”
“Dear old Pierre,” murmured Buck, as he fumbled in his pocket for the key of the safe, his eyes glued all the time on the two little heaps of gold.
Dick Willoughby was in a way happy in his retreat. At first he had been inclined to regret the jail delivery—it might have been the manlier part to have faced the music and cleared his name before the whole world. But then he reflected on the uncertainties of a trial, the cases of innocent men having suffered because of damning circumstantial evidence piled up against them, the vindictiveness of Ben Thurston and the undoubted power of his money to press the criminal charge by every unscrupulous means. So Dick soon came round to the belief that he might be safer for the time being in the guardianship of the White Wolf than at the mercy of a fallible jury.
Then there was Merle Farnsworth to consider. Yes; to have brought her into a public court, to have allowed her to plead for him by telling the story of Marshall Thurston’s loathsome advances—that was a thing that could never have been tolerated. The leader of the jail-breaking gang had been right; Dick owed it to Merle to save her from such a cruel ordeal.
Finally Dick’s contentment over his change of quarters was completed when Pierre Luzon appeared with a superb equipment of drawing instruments and materials. There was no time to worry now over surmises as to the wisdom of this course or the other course. Work lay to his hand—work of the most absorbing and delightful kind; and with all the ambitious enthusiasm of his temperament he tackled it whole-heartedly there and then. Hour after hour, day after day, Pierre watched in contemplative silence the methodical advancement of the task to which the young architect had applied himself.
But there were frequent intervals for conversation, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, as the mood prompted. Occasionally Pierre drifted into semi-confidential reminiscences, and Willoughby soon came to know in close detail the story of Don Manuel’s life—the tragedy of his sister Rosetta’s death, the vow of vengeance against Ben Thurston, the early bandit days when the White Wolf counted every gringo in the land his natural enemy, the often hairbreadth escapes of the outlaw, his sublime courage and nerve in the direst emergencies.
“Don Manuel was one great man,” remarked Pierre at the close of one of these confidences—the phrase was a favorite one with the old Frenchman. “Many and many a time he could have shot his enemy from a distance and got away. But Don Manuel had vowed zat he would kill him hand to hand—zat ze villain must die with a last malediction in his ear, and knowing zat it was he, ze White Wolf, who in ze end had revenged his sister’s shame.”
“He felt, too, didn’t he, that his father had been wronged in being driven from San Antonio Rancho?”
“Sure—zat was another great wrong—zat was why Don Manuel was so bitter against all ze Americans. But he made zem pay for ze land many and many times over.” Then Pierre, as was now his custom in Dick’s presence when speaking at any length, lapsed into French as he continued: “But the White Wolf was a man of high honor. He never used any of the proceeds of his robberies for himself. True, he spent the money to pay his band, to pay the numerous scouts and spies whose services he secretly retained, to plan and accomplish further hold-ups, to defy and outwit the authorities. But on his own needs—never—not one dollar!”
Pierre went on to explain that after Ben Thurston had fled from California and kept away in hiding, Don Manuel had visited Spain, to claim the family estates in Valencia to which his father’s death had left him the sole heir. These he had sold for many millions of dollars, and most of that money he kept in banks in London and Paris. So he was a very rich man, and had no need to rob anyone except to gratify his vengeance. Even the hoarded gold of Joaquin Murietta he had never touched. It remained intact today in the treasure vault of the cave, boxes and sacks of gold and jewels.
“Won’t I be allowed to see this wonderful treasure?” asked Dick, half jesting.
“Perhaps, some day, if the White Wolf chooses to show you. But it is not for me to do that—I swore an oath of secrecy when the White Wolf trusted me—me and Felix Vasquez, who was also his confidant. But Vasquez was killed at Tulare Lake. So now only we two know the secret, and until the White Wolf himself dies my lips are sealed by the solemn oath I swore to the Virgin Mary.” The old man crossed himself devoutly.
“Then where does the White Wolf live now?”
“Ah, that is another secret. Again I would break my oath if I spoke one word.”
“And Guadalupe—does she know these things?” asked Dick in English.
“Guadalupe? Oh, no,” responded Pierre, politely adopting the change of language, “she is just one servant, our cook—one very excellent cook, as monsieur knows—and ze guardian of ze cave. For ze real white wolf guards Guadalupe—ze big animal is just like one tame dog to ze old squaw, but with his fierce jaws he would kill anyone who dared to approach her or come near ze hidden entrance to zis cavern. No man can ever find zat while ze white wolf is alive. In ze old days he killed several men when zey dared to follow Guadalupe.”
“Then the white wolf must be very old?”
“As old as Guadalupe—as old as the Tehachapi mountains,” exclaimed Pierre, again crossing himself and thereby revealing the superstitious dread in which he held the savage animal.
“But you can pass the white wolf, can’t you?’ asked Dick.
“Never—except when Guadalupe give permission. Then ze wolf lies down and I can come out of ze cave or enter. Ah! ze white wolf is one terrible beast. But he never shows his teeth to Don Manuel. Only Don Manuel can pass when Guadalupe is not there.”
“Then where is Guadalupe’s riffle of gold—where is the lake of oil about which you told Tom Baker?”
“Come, I will show you zese,” replied Pierre. As he rose he picked up the lantern he usually carried.
Dick jumped to his feet with alacrity and followed his guide.
They crossed the main cavern, then entered another side gallery. This had many windings and from it ran several diverging rock corridors. But Pierre led the way unfalteringly.
Fully half a mile must have been traversed when at last the Frenchman halted and swung his lantern aloft.
“Zere!” was all he said.
Dick followed the flash of the lantern, and there before him was a dark pool stretching away indefinitely into the blackness beyond. He bent down and scooped up a little of the fluid in his palm. It was a brown oil, as thin as water, and therefore capable of use without any refining process.
“Great Scott, this is wonderful!” exclaimed Dick in profound amazement.
“Very wonderful,” concurred Pierre. “In zis cavern are oil and water, also gold—Guadalupe’s gold. Ze gold is close to here. Come.”
Pierre turned and again led the way through dark and winding corridors. At a little distance Dick became conscious of the purling of a running stream. Pierre stopped once more, but this time held the lantern close to the ground.
“Here Guadalupe come to wash out ze nuggets of gold, and since I have been in prison she buy with zem, so Mr. Baker say to me, groceries at ze store. Don Manuel, when I tell him, he very angry—she never do zat again.”
“Poor old Buck Ashley!” laughed Dick. “He lost you, Pierre, and now he’ll be losing his best paying customer, too.”
While speaking, he knelt and dipped his hands into the stream, bringing up some gravel into the lantern rays. But Pierre shook his head.
“You no find ze gold. Guadalupe wash many hours to get, perhaps, just one nugget. But there is heaps and heaps, if ze miners came with spades and cradles.”
“Great guns, there must be the reef, too, from which the nuggets have come!” exclaimed Dick, rising erect and dropping the handful of pebbles.
“Now, we must go back,” said Pierre, “for zis evening you are to be allowed to come for a ride with me down ze mountains.”
“You don’t say?” Dick cried, surprised and delighted.
“Yes; Don manuel he send word today that he give permission. But you must wear ze bandage round your eyes, and you must promise to return when I give ze word.”
“Don’t for one moment think, old fellow, that I would leave my drawings. But where are we going tonight?”
“To La Siesta,” replied Pierre.
“Hurrah!” shouted Dick. “Hurry up, Pierre! I’m mighty glad you got me those ties and things from Los Angeles. You say you can give me a hair-cut?”
“Ze old-time bandit learned to trim ze hair of his friends as well as ze pocket-books of his enemies,” was the laughing answer.
MOST of the cattle had been driven off the land. The vaqueros had dispersed to the four points of the compass. Chester Munson had vacated his room in Dick Willoughby’s old home, and had taken up his residence and library duties at Mr. Robles’ mansion on the hill. Sing Ling had folded his tent like the Arab and silently stolen away in the same direction. A small army of surveyors had appeared on the scene and were quartered in the rancho buildings.
The only one of the old-timers who still lingered on was Ben Thurston, more gloomy and morose than ever, seldom stirring out of doors now, but conducting all his business by telephone or through the agency of the sleuth, Leach Sharkey, his only companion.
Jack Rover had pitched his camp temporarily at the store. Buck Ashley had assigned him Pierre’s cot, but the cowboy had fixed it under a wide-spreading sycamore, preferring to sleep in the open rather than share the grocery-perfumed atmosphere of the store building.
Tom Baker was around most of the time. The three men clung together with a vague sense that they had a common interest in the vast treasure which had so far eluded them, but which might any day come again within reach of their eager claws. It afforded an endless theme of conversation, varied by talk about the passing of the rancho and all the train of changes which were bound to follow the close settlement of the valley.
One morning Jack Rover found Buck at the door of the store, with a pair of antiquated-looking field glasses at his eyes.
“Where did you get the goggles, Buck?” asked Jack.
“Oh, I rummaged ‘em out of a trunk—had almost forgot I had the blamed things. But we used to keep a sharp lookout in the old bandit days—got kinda ready for any suspicious lookin’ riders on the road.” He had spoken while still peering through the binoculars, but now he turned to Jack and proffered him the glasses. “I do wonder what ‘n hell we’re all cornin’ to anyway. This here ranch that we’ve bragged up as bein’ the biggest in all California! Ugh!” The grunt was one of unspeakable disgust. “Take a look for yourself.”
Jack turned the glasses in the direction Buck had been gazing, and began to adjust the focus.
“What’s the matter now?” he asked.
“Matter ‘nough,” growled the storekeeper. “San Antonio Rancho is goin’ to the dogs. Do you see them specks away out yonder in the valley? That’s another band of surveyors. One feller’s peekin’ through a spy-glass set on a tripod; another feller goes ahead and puts up tall stakes with big figgers on ‘em, and the other fellers are chainin’ off the distances. This ‘ere ranch ‘ll surely look like a checker-board blamed soon.”
“Progress,” said Jack, laconically.
“Progress, hell!” snapped Ashley. “These new fellers that bought the ranch have sure ‘nuff driv’ off all the cattle and now they’re dividin’ up the land. I bet they’ll take the postoffice away from me—not that it pays much, for the Lord knows it don’t—but it brings customers to my store.”
“Well, Buck,” said the cowboy, consolingly, “there are lots worse things than moving a postoffice. What’s to prevent your setting up the finest grocery store in the new model city the advertisements speak about?”
“That would suit me fine, wouldn’t it?” cried the old storekeeper, with scathing contempt. “Goin’ around in a biled shirt, and handin’ out pencils and chewin’ gum to the little school gals that’ll be swarmin’ all over the place. Not on your life, Jack! I’ll be losin’ both my postoffice and my store in these new-fangled times.” He paused a moment, then his tone changed to one of aggressiveness. “However, they ain’t built their doggoned new town yet, and it’s my belief all this boom talk is just so much hot air.”
“In any case you won’t need to worry, Buck, after we get on the tracks of Pierre Luzon again. I intend to find the old squaw’s sand-bar, or my name isn’t Jack Rover.”
“And I betche I’m a-goin’ to find Joaquin Murietta’s cache,” concurred the old man with equal determination.
Just then Tom Baker slouched out of the store, where he had overheard the conversation.
“Oh, things are a-goin’ to turn out all right in the end, boys, don’t fret over that. And there’s one thing gol-dern certain, there’ll be some great things doin’ in this ‘ere valley once they get started on buildin’ the town. The new place will just spring up like Oklahomy City, or Liberal, Kansas, or some of them big towns that had twenty thousand people livin’ in ‘em inside o’ thirty days from the time they were surveyed and laid out.”
“That seems quite impossible,” commented Jack.
“Not impossible by a derned sight. My brother was at Liberal, Kansas, down there on the Rock Island, near No Man’s Land, you know. The new town had been talked of and talked of for mebbe three or four months, just as this new town is bein’ talked about today. Then finally the mornin’ came when the new town of Liberal was to be opened up. There was to be a regular town openin’, so to speak, and a sale of lots. Why, great guns, when the management of that town company rode into the station, on the early train, they found more’n ten thousand people right there campin’ in covered wagons, tents and all that sorta business, just awaitin’ for the auctioneerin’ to start.”
Tom paused to take a fresh chew of tobacco and then rambled on:
“I tell you, boys, that within thirty days there was twenty thousand people livin’ in that ‘ere town. Two banks were established, and one of them had one hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars in deposits, too. Oh, there’s lots of people who remember the rush to Liberal, and the boomin’ of Oklahomy City also. And history’s fixin’ to repeat itself right here on this ‘ere ranch. Things will be sizzlin’ when the town site is finally located and the rush starts pourin’ in from Portland, Oregon, on the north, to San Diego on the south, with a few thousands from Texas and other states this side o’ the Rocky Mountains. They’ll sure be great doin’s when the Los Angeles syndicate announce they’ve awarded to some feller that ten-thousand-dollar prize for the best plans for their ideal city, as they keep on callin’ it.”
“Munson and I were speaking about the contest and the prize,” remarked Jack, “and were saying that if Dick Willoughby were only here, he’d about win, hands down. You know he was an architect once, before he came West.”
“Dick Willoughby,” snorted Ashley, “How can he compete when he don’t know anything about the blamed business? He’s hid away, right enough.”
“Munson knows a thing or two,” remarked Tom Baker. “If he’d only apeak, he could tell us where Dick is. That’s my opinion.”
“And there once again you’re dead wrong,” retorted Jack, warmly. “If Munson only knew where Dick is hiding, he would have got that very prize competition advertisement into his hands long before now. He’s sore because he can’t send Dick the word. Where is Dick Willoughby? By gad, it’s a mystery.”
“I guess you’re right,” said the sheriff. “That sort o’ exonerates Munson from keepin’ things from his partners. I think I owe it to Chester Munson to drink his health—just for ever doubtin’ him. What shall it be, boys?”
And the open-air meeting adjourned.
It was the very evening of the day on which this conversation had been held in Buck Ashley’s store that Dick Willoughby rode forth from the cavern blindfolded and under the guidance of Pierre Luzon. For the first hour progress was slow—round many turnings, down steep declivities, with just here and there a few miles of easier trail. But then there had been a swift canter for another hour over grass land, and now at last the riders were upon a well-made road. Dick divined that this must be the highway leading to La Siesta, but from what point of the compass they had come he had not the remotest conception.
Very soon Pierre Luzon, still riding ahead with the leading rein, came to a halt.
“Here we are. Dismount, please,” he said. “You are free to remove ze bandage.”
Dick looked; they were right below the knoll on which the Darlington home stood. Lights were gleaming from the windows. Dick could even hear the faint tinkle of the piano.
“I hide ze ponies here in zis little grove of trees,” Pierre continued, pointing to a coppice not fifty yards from the main road. “In two hours’ time, at eleven o’clock”—Pierre looked at his watch in the bright moonlight—“monsieur will return. I have your word?”
“My word as a gentleman, Pierre,” exclaimed Dick, extending his hand. “So long then, old fellow. I’ve got to make the best use of my time.”
The piano playing stopped abruptly when Willoughby, unannounced, appeared at the door of the music room.
“Dick!” exclaimed Merle delightedly, leaving the instrument and rushing toward him. If they had been alone Dick felt that right then she would have jumped into his arms. But at the distance of a few paces she halted and clasped her hands.
“How ever did you get here, Mr. Willoughby?” she asked intensely.
“I rode here,” he answered, as they shook hands. “But it is only a brief visit. Hallo, Miss Grace! I’m delighted to see you again. And you, Ches, old sport—why this is great luck to find you here! Mrs. Darlington, I’m mighty glad to see you all once more.”
The whole bevy were crowding around him, shaking hands and expressing their joyful surprise.
“We knew you were safe, that was all,” explained Munson.
“So you were having just the same jolly good times,” laughed Dick, glancing at the piano. “I’m simply dying for some music.”
“But wait a minute,” exclaimed Munson, drawing a fat wad of newspaper cuttings from his pocket. “I’ve got to tell you about a competition you must get into—new plans for an ideal city here—”
“In the heart of the old rancho,” smiled Dick, as he completed the sentence. While he spoke, he placed his arm affectionately across his chum’s shoulders. “I know all about it, old man. I’m working hard on my plans—they are already more than half done.”
“Bravo!” shouted Munson. “That’s great news.”
“But here, too, is Mr. Robles,” exclaimed Dick, breaking from the group and stepping across the room. “Excuse me, senor, but I did not notice you were here till this moment.”
“No excuse needed, my friend. You were better engaged”—this with a humorous side-glance at the young ladies. “But I am glad to see you looking so well.”
“Where have you been, Mr. Willoughby?” asked Grace.
“That I cannot tell you,” replied Dick gravely. “I have pledged my solemn word. I must leave you at eleven o’clock, returning whence I came. And meanwhile nobody must ask me a single question about my place of hiding. There now—that’s all. What shall it be first, Miss Merle, a piano solo or a duet with the violin?”
“Supper, I should say,” exclaimed Mrs. Darlington, as she left the room.