CHAPTER I
ON THE CANYON TRAIL
“Hello, there! What in the name of reason is this?”
The horseman’s excited cry was echoed by a startled neigh from his beast, which wheeled about so suddenly that he nearly precipitated both himself and rider into the gulch below.
“Oh! I’m sorry–Hold on, Zu! Go! Do, please. Quick! It’s so narrow just beyond and I can’t–”
The stranger obeyed, perforce, for his spirited animal having now headed up the slope, continued on his course at breakneck speed, pursued at equal pace by the unknown creature that had terrified him.
The race would not have been so even had the trail been wider, for King Zulu could easily have beaten his contestant, but, as it was, the fleeing bay bruised his master’s leg against the canyon wall, now and then, while bits of the bird’s plumage were torn on the same projecting rocks. There was no point of passage till more than a mile higher on the mountain, and Jess knew this if Mr. Hale did not. He knew nothing save that he was clinging and riding for his life, and that this “Western horseback tour” which his doctor had prescribed for him, seemed now more likely to prove his death than his cure.
But when a laugh rang out, close to his shoulder, he turned his head and glanced angrily backward.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, but–it’s so funny! I’ve often wanted to try King Zu against a strange horse and now I have. Only, if we were up there on the mesa, he’d show you!”
“Does this trail never end, nor turn?”
The laughter on the girl’s face changed to anxiety.
“Not ill, exactly; only I’m not experienced at this business and it shakes me.”
“You ride too hard and stiff. That’s why. Let yourself go–just be part of your horse. He’s a beauty, isn’t he? Even the boys couldn’t stand that gait.”
“And you. Who taught you to ride an ostrich? Where did you get it? It’s almost the first one I ever saw and quite the first that Prince did. I was nearly as scared as he, meeting such a creature on a lonely mountain trail.”
“I never learned–it just happened. Zulu is ‘patriarch’ of the flock. The only imported bird left alive. We just grew up together, he and I. Didn’t we, King?”
Speech was now easier, for the speed of both animals had slackened, that of Prince to a comfortable trot. While the sidewise lurching motion of the ostrich was enjoyable enough to Jessica, it turned Mr. Hale’s head dizzy, watching. Or it may have been the blinding sunshine, beating against the canyon wall and deflected upon the riders in waves of heat.
“Whew! This is scorching. How far, yet?”
Jessica saw that what she minded not at all was turning the stranger sick, and answered swiftly:
“You wouldn’t be able to get further than ‘five times’ before we reach the turn. There’ll be a glorious breeze then. There always is.”
“What do you mean by ‘five times’?”
“Why, just the multiplication table. I always say it when I’ve something I want to get over quick. You begin at one-times-one, and see if it isn’t so.”
“What shall we find at the top; your home?”
“Oh, no, indeed. That is quite the other way. Down in the valley. Sobrante ranch. That’s ours. Were you going there?”
“I was going–anywhere. I had lost my way. ‘Missed the trail,’ as you say in this country.”
“I thought, maybe, you were just a ‘tourist.’”
Mr. Hale laughed, and the laugh helped him to forget his present discomfort.
“Perhaps I am, even if you do speak so disdainfully. Are all ‘tourists’ objectionable?”
Jessica’s brown cheek flushed. She felt she had said something rude–she, whose ambition it was to be always and everywhere “Our Lady Jess,” that the dear “boys” called her. But she remembered how annoyed her mother was by the visits of strangers who seemed to regard Sobrante and its belongings as a “show” arranged for their special benefit.
“We–we are generally glad when the rains come,” she answered, evasively.
“To keep them away? Yet if, as I suspect, you have an ostrich farm, I can’t blame their curiosity. I’m hoping to visit one, myself.”
“Ours is not a real ‘farm.’ It is just one of the many things our ranch is good for. But I know my mother would make you very welcome. You–but there! Look down, please. Yonder it is, Sobrante. That means ‘richness,’ you know. And now up. The next turn will land us on the mesa, and I hope, I hope, I have come in time!”
The road had now broadened, and with a little chirrup to King Zulu, she passed and forged ahead so rapidly that she was soon out of sight. The great bird upon whose back she was perched was not, apparently, at all wearied, but poor Prince was utterly winded, while a curious feeling of loneliness stole upon his rider.
But, presently, the sound of voices came over the bluff, and Mr. Hale urged his tired beast forward. The next he knew he was sprawling on the plateau and his horse had fallen beside him. Prince’s forefoot was in a hole, from which he was unable to withdraw it.
“Oh! oh! The poor creature! And you, sir, are you hurt?”
“No, I think not. Rather a shake-up, though, and I was dizzy with the heat before. Prince, Prince, lie still; we’ll help you.”
One glance had showed the stranger that they were near a shepherd’s hut, and that its occupant was at home. The man had been sitting quietly in the shade of the little building and of the one pepper tree which grew beside its threshold. He did not move, even now, till the girl called impatiently:
“Pedro! Come! Quick!”
Then he arose in a leisurely fashion and, carefully depositing his osiers in a tub of water, came forward.
“So? He can’t get up, yes? A wise man looks where he rides, indeed.”
Despite his anxiety over Prince, Mr. Hale regarded the shepherd with amused curiosity. Pedro’s swarthy face was as unmoved as if the visits of strangers with disabled horses were daily events; but the man’s calmness did not prevent his usefulness. In fact, during every step of his deliberate advance he had been studying the situation and how best to aid the fallen animal, which had now ceased to struggle and lay gazing at his master with a dumb, pitiful appeal.
Then Pedro bent forward and, with a strength amazing in a man of his small build, seized Prince’s head and shoulder and with one prodigious wrench freed him from the pitfall. Then he stooped again and carefully examined the bruised forefoot.
“A moon and a half he’ll go lame. Yes. For just so long let him be left with Pedro. Si?”
Then he led the limping beast toward the hut and began to bathe its injured ankle with the water from the tub.
“Marvelous! I never saw anything done as easily as that!” cried Mr. Hale, recovering from his astonishment.
“Ah; but you’ve never seen our Pedro before. And to think I was so angry with him, I!”
With a remorseful impulse Jessica sprang forward and threw her arms about the old shepherd’s shoulders. He received her caress as calmly as he did everything else, though a keen observer might have seen a fleeting smile around his rugged lips.
Smiles did, indeed, spring to all three faces when, a moment later, the rattling of tins discovered Zulu rummaging a heap of empty cans, even in the very act of swallowing a highly decorated one.
The jingling startled Prince, also, from the repose into which he had now settled, and, after one terrified glance toward his unknown enemy, King Zu, he dashed across the mesa as if lameness were unknown.
At which Pedro smiled, well content.
“Good. He that uses his own legs spares his neighbors. Yes.”
“Meaning that he would have to be exercised by somebody?”
The