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Show fc CARMENo RANCHO-" By FRANK H. SPEARMAN fnlHSo V these. Take, senor. the powder and Sanchez. I will not forget you." out you will come back'" Bowie looked at the land he loved the fair land to which he was say-ng say-ng good-by He looked at Sanchez. Quien sabe?" He watched the Indian ride silently silent-ly away. Away, mused Bowie, to the scene of his bitterest tragedv and his deadly dead-ly revenge. Why is it that, like the wounded animal, we crawl back to die where the arrow struck us down? And I. he mused on. back to the desert, back to the torment of hunger hun-ger and thirst; leaving this land flowing with milk and honey and licking my wound-perhaps, who knows, to die. Well-let Sanchez go to Guadalupe. I won't go back." In Texas the adventurer found everything ev-erything changed. And. to his taste, changed for the worse. Bowie had left the sturdy little republic imbued with some feeling of enthusiasm for a country he could -Continued 50' Padre-S0 'ri Bowie- '' e -I will give you 'perform your pen-1 pen-1 And whatever hap-fa hap-fa be ready. Good-by. M now truly are my Ld h' wrinkled hand, t .ymbol of eternity lj ,poke low and rap- words of absolution, bering footstep was corridor. "Come!" ,rjard, unlocking and ;door. would have thought Bowie, to J'bim down. iy, amigo." Speaking ,'ne padre stepped into find waed away. ,s (ell Bowie stood close :0le, watching for the j, in the corridor. He anxious to finish the 'jj lure that he could 3 with bim. figure passed Bowie's aout pausing, walked sidor, The Texan tip- bis stool and sat down .hour passed in the cell, training his ears and .(ir the whistle which an the horses had come, ilthily appeared at the ad unlocked it. Bowie : lor t whispered confl- -.a will soon be left be-:ardhouse. be-:ardhouse. I wait for ring with me." r winu bervi CHAPTER Xiu duHnnDCh,u GuadaluP was not quiet aunng the year following Bowie's departure. Political disturbances marked the period throughout Call-orma. Call-orma. Rival Mexican factions were ln rnot,on most of the time. Fre-mnt Fre-mnt increasingly bold, had en-urged en-urged the scope of his depredations. Lurnmodore Stockton had not as yet wid him bluntly where he belonged. Pardaloe and Simmie. deserted by Bowie, felt the wanderlust and resigned re-signed at Guadalupe to betake them-selves them-selves to Sutter's where, as hunters and riflemen, they were welcomed by the energetic Swiss. If there had been lingering, after Bowie's departure from Guadalupe, a Penumbra of the reputation that his presence had established at the rancho, it faded completely when his scouts left Minor marauders had heretofore steered clear of the noted hacienda, since the Tejanos were known to visit swift and severe punishment on any who ran oft horses or cattle. The wild Tulares, the Mexican rovers and the wandering wan-dering Americanos had long been content to do their pillaging elsewhere. else-where. Seemingly everything united in that year to make the situation of Don Ramon and Guadalupe unpleasant. unpleas-ant. And at the dinners many were the regretful expressions that Bowie had deserted the rancho for so his going was mildly characterized by his Spanish friends. One morning after an especially exasperating report had come in from Pedro, about a caballeria of horses that had been run off during the night by thieving Americanos, Carmen spoke up with spirit "But why," she asked of no one :e But he knew Bowie better than any other person at Guadalupe. He had seen him in many tight places; he had seen him meet emergency and knew his resourcefulness. He could only say, and did say, that he thought Bowie would make it and return. Many moons passed at the rancho before anyone knew whether Pedro's Pe-dro's prophecy or Don Ramon's foreboding would prove right. Guadalupe Guad-alupe affairs did not improve in the long interval; rather, they grew worse. To make matters worse at Guadalupe, Guad-alupe, Don Ramon, never robust, a man of peace, unfitted to cope with such conditions, fell ill, and the troubled trou-bled management of the rancho fell on Dona Maria. This, In turn, meant that Carmen would have to assume a share of the burden, and she did so. Pedro j gradually came to look to her first j for her mother's orders and at length for her own. Carmen of necessity ne-cessity became active In the saddle and, under the wing of Pedro and his husky vaqueros, full of fight at the thought of marauders. Her mother's chief worry was that the burning-eyed girl would become embroiled, em-broiled, to her undoing, in resisting resist-ing minor raids on the rancho. None of this round of anxieties and excitement diminished the interest in-terest of Dona Maria or her daughter daugh-ter in the affairs of Mission Santa Clara. Its now rapid spoliation by the greedy Mexican government served to sharpen the sympathies of Dona Maria and Carmen for the patient padres who submitted without with-out resistance to the outrageous pillage pil-lage of their corrupt oppressors. "It is not for ourselves, dear seno-rita," seno-rita," said Padre Martinez to Car- men, "that we mourn, but for these poor neophytes, our Indian men and Indian women whom we are forced to turn away to drift back, so many of them, into savagery. With our Hope Against Despair Hope is a lover's stall; walk hence with that, and manage it against despairing thoughts. Shakespeare. m particular, "why, instead of talking talk-ing so much about it, don't we do something about getting Senor Bowie Bow-ie back?" What could be done, even to get track of him, let alone getting him back to Guadalupe? Inquiry followed fol-lowed inquiry concerning him. Carmen Car-men epecially took up the subject with energy. It was quite in vain. His friends were besought to hunt him up. Dr. Doane was enlisted; he worked at the task. He had a friendly interest in bringing him back to what appeared to his vision an altered situation. At Mission Santa Clara Padre Martinez was appealed to. He, too, was very ready to do what he could, which was little, but he wrote to fellow missioners in the South to ask that they be on the lookout. In Yerba Buena Nathan Spear, Dr. Doane's friend, told the doctor that i Do you want to be : you hear the whistle, and we will start." :esitated. . "Hark! the :spered Bowie. "I will i at the horses. Work : curbed his nervous ap-& ap-& well as he could, ad to the rear of the : lie horses, their heads :er. They stood quiet i after patting them, i to the guardroom. ' whispered Bowie in :an you find me a knife t both, senor. And I Afor myself; and pow- i" a are ready?" aor." Before I go back to the 1 leave mv comnlimpnta "And whatever happens, you will be ready." call his own, hoping as he did to unite with its fortunes the grandiose domain of the Pacific Coast. In California itself he had been forced to realize how futile any such effort must be. Much greater nationsthe na-tionsthe ambitious Americans, the perennially grasping British, the Black-bearded Russians, the easygoing easy-going Spaniards and the thrice-stu- pid Mexicans were all striving to land in their laps the prize of the world California. And now after ten years the republic re-public of Texas was no more. A new crop of politicians had sprung up. The warriors of Texas were gone, or their counsels were sneered at. The slaveholders of the United States were plotting to add the vast territory of the little republic to the slaveholding states, and they now controlled the sentiment of Texas. Ysabel was right! It took some time for Bowie to get all this clear in his head. But the clearer the intrigue became, the deeper grew his disgust for the annexationists an-nexationists who were seated in the political saddles. He realized that, after all, poll-tics poll-tics held no abiding interest for him. The thing that pleased him most was the wild longhorns of the great prairies. The longhorn of his youth had not changed; the vast sweep of the Staked Plain had not ie your keys and un-"or un-"or along the corridor." -ray door. Give ev-i ev-i chance to get away acan scoundrel. Make -lied to the horses. He and awaited Sanchez, foe in rejoining him. feet were muffled, and -".led men, riding with nd with Sanchez for 'their escape without ag sounded. Working -daybreak found them ' first range of mounts! moun-ts! of the presidio, out of that rascal's said Bowie. "The ' what do we want a my way to Texas. :come along?" Where is that?" J-six, seven sleeps if 3 Ike way. If trouble. he had in his safe a considerable sum of money belonging to Bowie but had no clue as to where the owner might be. He could write, and did write, to his Los Angeles correspondent. Beyond this, that a man of the same surname, Bowie, had been in prison at San Diego on a charge of treason and had made his escape, nothing further could be learned as to his whereabouts. At Sutter's neither of Bowie's men, Pardaloe or Simmie, had any track of him. They were told at Sutter's that he had packed up, resisting re-sisting all inducements to remain, and left the fort. A ray of light on the fate of the missing man came, after a year or more, from a least expected quarter. quar-ter. Pedro, one morning, brought in word that the missing Sanchez had come back; that he had found the rascal, Yosco and killed him and he was hiding somewhere near Mission Santa Clara and had mentioned men-tioned to Indians there news of The wheat is almost cut. cattle taken and our horses sold how can we buy grain to feed these poor people? And it would break your heart, senorita, to see them plead with us for food. They look to us as children to their mother. They do not understand. They only say, 'We are hungry.' What can we do?" Carmen's eyes flashed. "I know what we can do, Padre. We have at Guadalupe every promise of a . m i rri i- a i i Dounuiui narvesi. ine wneai is almost al-most ready to cut. There is a granary gran-ary full of last year's wheat. You shall have every bushel above our own needs for your poor Indians. This wretched robber Mexican government! gov-ernment! What greedy beasts! Talk about Americanos! They couldn't be worse!" "Such is our lot, my child," said Padre Martinez, thanking her. "Cease not to pray. Only to heaven can we turn for help." In Monterey Dr. Doane's office was not far from the water front The doctor himself, in the Inner office, of-fice, was engaged one morning in reading when the outer door opened and a bearded man looked in on him. The doctor glanced up. "Bowie!" he exclaimed. "Where in Texas did you come from? Sit down." "I hardlv expected to see you ay how many sleeps. Indians; sometimes Wide deserts, high iteP rivers. But I I can do it rest, think it over. come with me, I j'test care I can of sun, breakfasted, the excitement and e escape, Bowie the dying fire and he napped San-figures San-figures in the b'ts of sticks. "d rose to his feet, asked, "what do you ;?u want to do?" :lBl'nd was made up. f,a"i respectfully, "I , l0.r to stay in my ' ' will go back to dim, ti I changed. And then there was a sense of the comradeship of these men that rode with him through fair sunshine and foul northers, men who had no ambition' am-bition' but to serve, no instinct but of loyalty, in whose lexicons there was no such word as fear most of them had fought in the battles of Texas for freedom men who hated the greaser politicos with a righteous right-eous hatred and owed no fealty to any but their leader. To Bowie such men were all in all. His concerns were their concerns, con-cerns, his feuds, their feuds; his enemies, their enemies. Bowie loved his cowboys; they loved him-proved him-proved it through storm and stress. Yet something, somewhere in his thoughts, would never quite disappear disap-pear Banished, it would always come back. Those other nights. UUi'vu w Bowie. Pedro was dispatched to the mission mis-sion Indians at once with instructions instruc-tions to bring Sanchez back by fair means or foul, to assure him that his old job was open for him and that, while he had not been forgiven forgiv-en for killing the man who had taken tak-en his sweetheart, his conduct would be overlooked. After two days of suspense at Guadalupe Pedro, early ear-ly the third morning, walked into the office of Don Ramon to say he had Sanchez with him. Dona Maria and Carmen Joined Don Ramon and waited to hear Sanchez' San-chez' story. It was vivid and absorbing, ab-sorbing, for Sanchez told everything. But in the end the question mark of mystery still remained. The two men had parted in the mountains, Sanchez to go north, Bowie to work his way over the inhospitable Si-the Si-the trackless des- erras and across the trackless desert des-ert and the Staked Plain into faraway far-away Texas. It was a recital so convincing that none thought to question it. Surmise fixed only on the possibilities of the outcome. To undertake such a feat, even in a stout company of frontiersmen, fron-tiersmen, at that early period of California travel, was enough to give the hardy pause; to attempt it alone was a challenge to the most reck-IesS reck-IesS adventurer. Spanish thought WOuld dismiss such an attempt as msanity. Yet the men who were to make California into a frontier em-" em-" edid attempt the hazards of such endeavor and sometimes, though by no means always, got through. Much talk followed Sanchez news Don Ramon gave up at once all expectations of ever seeing Bowie aTn The Indians were divided in Son. Sanchez doubted whether Bowie could survive the pen s and hardships that lay ahead of him. paedro could not argue or express Self eloquently on any subject. those nights glorified by the same stars-it was the thought of those that stole in on his wakeful hours. With everything to invite sleep-peace sleep-peace in the silent camp, peace in the stilled winds, a hard day's ride behind, a hard day's ride ahead-sleep ahead-sleep would not come. The stars of the vast plains to look up at . but these same stars lighted the night in California. The cattle-with cattle-with their death-dealing horns, were full brother warriors of those long-horns long-horns of California. Everything seemed to say California. Cali-fornia. Before he had left it they had told him it would be so No one. they told him, could forget California. Cal-ifornia. He would, they said always al-ways hear the soft wild call of e oriole, the plaintive note of e meadow lark, the distant coo of the ruddy-throated dove. If he had to think of California, these f were the thought, he tried to dwell on. One he doggedly tried to hun-e u sic of one voice, a voice that ne Mova 10 hard not to hear when sleep shunned him. 'fdly have believed, 'H how sharply 'j4 c him. Guada-Bat Guada-Bat meant to him! , of sheer happiness, fWant Wilh lif6i what ttow-capped peaks, iw, delectable sun- ace at an evening Wesence near, while ike, within his al treasure of his "wakening! The J crushing reali-"stle reali-"stle dreams had ?"Pe indeed! m response to "Perhaps it is t 1 am sure it is. Irnds. They wiU 5anchez. You are gave to Bow-Jr Bow-Jr and the salt. 'fission San Ga- U give me again in California," said the doctor, doc-tor, when the men had seated themselves, them-selves, "so tell me all about it." "Not much to tell," countered Bowie. "I got a letter from Captain Cap-tain Sutter while I was in San Antonio, An-tonio, making me a pretty good offer of-fer to join him as a partner. So I'm on my way to San Francisco, as they call it now, to get some money from Nat Spear and take a boat Wednesday with my horses up the river. It's three months now since the captain wrote, so he may have made different arrangements. We'll see." There was a natural bond ot sympathy sym-pathy between the Irish doctor and the gaunt Texan. They talked some time before the conversation turned to what Bowie wanted to hear about But since both were pretty good at masking their inner thoughts and each waited on the other, it took time to bring the talk around U Rancho Guadalupe. (TO BE COKTISL ED' |