A Vendetta of the Hills

CHAPTER I – Guadalupe

IT was a June morning in mid-California. The sun was just rising over the rim of the horizon, dissipating the purple haze of dawn and bathing in golden sunshine a great valley spread out like a parchment scroll. It was a rural scene of magnificent grandeur – encircling mountains, rolling foothills, and then the vast expanse of plain dotted here and there with clumps of trees and clothed with luxuriant grasses.

Thousands of cattle were bestirring themselves from their slumbers – some sniffing the air and bellowing lowly, others paving the earth in an indifferent way, and all moving slowly toward one or other of the mountain streams that wound serpent-like through the valley, as if they deemed it proper to begin the day with a morning libation.

To the south, commanding a narrow pass that pierced the Tehachapi mountain range, stood old Fort Tejon, dismantled now and partly in ruins, picturesque if no longer formidable – a romantic relic of old frontier fighting days. In the foreground of the crumbling adobe walls, sheltered under giant oaks, was a trading store and postoffice combined.

Within this building half a dozen men were in earnest conversation, swapping yarns even at that early hour. Perhaps they, too, like the cattle, had felt the call for their “morning’s morning.”

A young army officer, Lieutenant Chester Munson, was telling of a rough experience he had had a few days before with a mountain lion in one of the near-by rugged canyons.

The story was interrupted by a sound of galloping hoofs.

“Here’s Dick Willoughby,” someone announced.

The rider brought his mustang to a panting stop, threw the bridle rein over its head, and, leaping lightly from his saddle, entered the store.

Dick Willoughby was a tall, athletic, square-jawed, grey-eyed young fellow who looked determinedly purposeful. He was originally an architect from New York City, but during the last five years had become an adopted son of the West – had made the sacrifice, or rather gone through the improving metamorphosis, of assimilation.

“Good morning, Ches, old boy,” he shouted to the lieutenant.

The latter returned the salutation with a friendly nod.

“The camp was lonely without you last night, Dick,” he said. “Who is the fair senorita that keeps you away?”

“That’s all right,” replied Willoughby, smiling. “I will tell you later.” Then after a genial allround greeting for the others present, he eagerly exclaimed: “Boys, she is coming.”

“What! Guadalupe?” shouted everyone in chorus of surprise.

“Yes, Guadalupe is headed this way. I spied her on the mountain trail an hour ago, and thanks to my field glasses, was able to determine the moving speck was none other than the old squaw herself. She is just beyond yon clump of trees and will be here shortly.”

“I am wonderin’ if she’s got her apron filled again with them there gold nuggets,” remarked Tom Baker inquiringly, while a smile flitted over his grey-bearded countenance. “That squaw is a regular free-gold placer proposition.”

“She would have been held up before now in the old days, eh, sheriff?” laughed one of the cowboys. Tom Baker had been sheriff for a long term of years in early times, and, although no longer in office, the title had still clung to him.

“By gad!” exclaimed Jack Rover, another cowboy, and a gentlemanly young fellow in manner and appearance. “She’s not going to get back to her hiding-place this time, nor to that will-o’-the-wisp placer gold mine of hers unless she shows me.”

“That will do for you,” said Dick Willoughby with an admonishing look. “Don’t you forget that Guadalupe, although an old Indian squaw, is also a human being. There is going to be no violence if I can prevent it.”

“Well,” laughed Jack, pushing his hat back as if to acknowledge that he had been checkmated, “you’re my boss on the cattle ranch, and I’ll have to take your tip, I guess.”

“I say, Dick,” asked the other cowboy, “did you see anything of the white wolf?”

“Do you mean the real wolf?” interjected Jack Rover, “or the bandit, Don Manuel?”

Willoughby was looking along the road and took no notice.

“I guess both are real,” mused Tom Baker, grimly smiling, and a general laugh followed.

“Well, I for one will subscribe to that,” exclaimed Buck Ashley, storekeeper, postmaster, bartender, and all-round generalissimo of the trading establishment. “If Don Manuel is not a wolf in human form, and a bigger outlaw than Joaquin Murietta ever thought of being, why you may take my head for a football.”

“But he’s dead, ain’t he?” asked the cowboy who had introduced the subject of the white wolf.

“Just one thing that I want to emphasize good and plenty to you fellers,” said Tom Baker, “and that is – ”

“Here she comes!” interrupted Dick Willoughby.

A hush fell over the group as the bent, aged figure of an Indian woman was seen approaching the store. Her features were hidden by a shawl that closely muffled her head and shoulders.

Buck Ashley saluted Guadalupe with a “How?” The squaw answered with the same abrupt salutation, shuffled up to the counter and said brokenly, “Coffee – sugar – tea – rice.” With her left hand she had gathered up the lower portion of her calico apron and held it pouch fashion. She thrust her right hand into the pocket so formed, and bringing forth a handful of gold nuggets, laid them on the counter. Some were the size of peas, and others as large as hulled hickory nuts. Not a word was spoken by the onlookers, who were wild-eyed in their astonishment. Soon interest rose to high tension.

Buck Ashley tied up a large package of sugar and pushed it toward the bent form of his customer; then resting his hand on the counter, he looked fixedly at the squaw and said, “More gold.”

Again she thrust her hand into the apron pocket and brought out another handful of nuggets, whereupon Ashley proceeded to tie up a large package of coffee. This done, he repeated the request for more gold. Old Guadalupe added another handful of nuggets to those already on the counter, and Ashley tied up a package of rice.

The squaw looked up at the storekeeper for a moment and then said, “Tea.”

Buck Ashley’s laconic response was “More gold,” and immediately another handful of nuggets was brought forth, whereupon a fourth package was deposited on the counter.

Old Guadalupe stowed the parcels in her apron on top of any remaining gold nuggets she might have brought. Then she turned and walked limpingly away, through the low brushwood toward a little grove of gnarled and twisted sycamores close to the ruined fort.

When she had gone Buck Ashley observed, “No use following her – not a damn bit of use in the world! She’ll make camp out there under the trees until some time tonight, and then vanish like a shadow into the dark.”

While speaking, Ashley had been gathering up the gold.

“I say, Buck,” observed Dick Willoughby, winking at his friend Lieutenant Munson, “it is my private opinion that that bandit, the White Wolf, has nothing on you.”

Tom Baker laughingly chimed in: “If I am any judge, and I allow as how I am, Buck here would make that pound-of-flesh Shylock feller look like thirty cents Mex.”

Ashley smiled greedily, but in a satisfied way, as he said with unruffled calm: “Guess I’d better weigh them nuggets and see how much the old squaw’s groceries cost her.”

“The treacherous Indian and the honest paleface,” laughed Dick Willoughby in a half-rebuking tone.

Buck Ashley bridled up. His voice rang with deep feeling.

“Boys,” he said, “you think I’m a Shylock, a robber, a devil I expect, and everything that’s bad. I don’t talk much about myself, but just so you’ll not think too blamed hard of me, I’ll ask you a question. Supposen when you was only about fifteen years old, you stood by, tied hand and foot, and saw a lot of redskins scalp and kill your father and mother and two little sisters, and then rob your dead father of over ten thousand dollars in gold, run off the family stock, and take you to their camp to burn at the stake as a sort of incidental diversion at one of their pow-wow dances; and supposen you performed a miracle and got away and took an oath to kill and rob every derned Indian you might see throughout the remaining days of your life – what, then, if I reformed and gave up the kilin’ and stuck to robbin’, would you blame me?”

During this tragic recital of his wrongs the old storekeeper had become noticeably excited.

Dick Willoughby got up from the cracker-box where he had been resting, and advancing with hand extended, said: “Buck, what you have told us presents the whole matter in a new light. Shake!”

“Thanks,” replied the storekeeper as he turned away to wipe a mist from his eyes.

Then quickly facing about, he called out in his usual gruff, hale and hearty manner: “Say, boys, what’ll you all have? This round is on the house.” They drank in silence. A fragment of Buck Ashley’s history had cleared away a good deal of previous misunderstanding.

CHAPTER II – Charmed Lives

THE spell of restraint that resulted from Buck Ashley’s story was at last broken by the cowboy, Jack Rover.

“Look here, Dick,” he exclaimed, “I’ll give a month’s salary if you will let me take a chance and follow old Guadalupe. I’ve simply got to find out and locate that sand-bar in some mountain stream from which she brings in all this gold. This is the third time I’ve seen our friend Buck Ashley collect a grocery bill from the old squaw, and the whole business, gold nuggets and all, is getting on my nerves. Why, I dreamed about it for a week last time I saw her forking out whole handfuls of gold.”

“Very well,” replied Willoughby, “if you want to take the chance, Jack, go ahead. But it is a mad project which will end in my expressing your remains back East or else planting you in the cemetery on the hill. It’s up to you to make your choice before you tackle the job. You certainly know what happened to four or five others who attempted to follow the old squaw. Each mother’s son of them was buried the next day.”

“Oh, that’s ancient history,” Jack retorted.

“Not such very ancient hist’ry,” remarked Tom Baker. “I myself saw young Bill McNab drilled through the heart with a bullet that seemed to come from nowhere. After that I’ll allow I wasn’t filled up with too much curiosity as to where Guadalupe hiked over the mountains.”

“There was a regular sharp-shootin’ outfit,” concurred Buck Ashley.

“And there wasn’t a sheriff in the country would have led a posse into that damned ambush,” Tom went on. “There wasn’t a sportin’ chance along that narrow ledge round which Guadalupe always disappeared. And with all them outlaws in the mountains!”

“But the outlaws have been wiped out years ago,” persisted Jack Rover.

“Mebbe,” said Tom Baker, sententiously.

“You forget the White Wolf,” added Buck Ashley.

“Which white wolf?” asked Jack. “I put that question before but got no answer.”

“Both,” replied Tom. “To begin with I don’t believe that Don Manuel is dead at all. That was only a newspaper story. You may take it from me that the bandit won’t pass in his checks till he gets old Ben Thurston. I’m allowin’ as how Ben Thurston would quick enough give a thousand head of his fattest beeves just to rest easy in his mind on that score. He’ll find out, sure enough, some day.”

“Yes, when the White Wolf finds him,” interjected the storekeeper with a terse emphasis.

“What’s that old feud anyway?” queried Lieutenant Munson. “Tell me, Tom.”

“Oh, it is an old story,” the sheriff answered. “I thought everybody knew about it, but of course you’re a newcomer. Well, you see,” he continued, clearing his throat and expectorating a copious and accurately aimed pit-tew of tobacco juice toward a knot-hole in the floor, “the White Wolf’s father, Don Antonio de Valencia, a reg’lar high-toned grandee from Spain, had settled in these here parts away back longer than anyone could remember. He claimed this whole stretch of country from horizon to horizon. Then came the Americans, among them a government surveyor named Thurston. He had a pull at Washington and managed to get a legal grant to the San Antonio property. Of course the old Spaniard had no real title – his was just a sort of squatter’s claim. But they do say as how he had lived in this here valley more than half a century, so it was mighty hard luck to lose the land. And the boy Manuel never would admit the Thurstons had any right to call it theirs.”

“Don Manuel had a younger sister,” interposed Buck Ashley. “Rosetta, a beautiful girl – looked like a morning-glory. Gad! but she sure had a purty face. You remember, Tom, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Tom Baker, “it’s not likely I should forget the poor girl. It was ‘cause of her the quarrel became a bitter blood feud – the Vendetta of the Hills, as we got to calling it. You see,” he went on, resuming the thread of his story, “old man Thurston’s son, Ben, the present owner of the rancho, was in his younger days a gay Lothario scamp, and he came from the East to his new home in California loaded down with a college education and a mighty intimate knowledge of the ways of the world that decent folks don’t talk about, much less practice. He had not been here a month until he commenced makin’ love to little Senorita Rosetta. Before the second sheep-shearin’ time came around, she was – well, in a delicate condition. To save himself and, as he thought, cover up the disgrace – you see he was engaged to a rich Eastern girl of prominent family – why, the young scoundrel conceived the hellish plot of lurin’ little Rosetta to Comanche Point one dark night. And when he got her there he threw her over the cliff – at least that’s the way the story goes. Guess Don Manuel was about twenty-five years old at that time, and Ben Thurston two or three years his junior. Well, the disgrace killed Rosetta’s father and mother. They died of grief and shame soon after the affair, almost on the same day, and Don Manuel buried them together in the old churchyard on the hill by the side of his murdered sister. And it was there and then, they say, that he took an oath to kill Ben Thurston. That was mor’n thirty years ago and the feud has been on ever since, and all us old-timers know hell will be poppin’ ‘round here one of these days.”

“But nobody ever sees the White Wolf, Don Manuel,” added Buck Ashley. “That’s the ex-tr’ornery part of it.”

“Oh, you yourself are likely to see him one of these dark nights, Buck,” laughed Jack Rover, as he winked at the other boys. “A storekeeper that’ll work night and day stacking up money year in and year out is liable to have a call sooner or later from the bandit and his friends.”

“Oh, hell!” was the laconic response of Buck Ashley. “Guess I sure can take care of myself.”

“But Don Manuel may not be alive,” suggested the young lieutenant.

“He’s alive right enough, make no mistake,” said Tom Baker, “although I’ll allow I don’t know a single soul who has actually seen him personally for more’n twenty years. He is a kind o’ shadowy cuss. Everybody knows him by his old-time deeds of high-way robbin’ and all-round murderin’ for golden loot. I heard of a feller last year who claims to have seen the White Wolf when he was makin’ that last big stage delivery over by Tulare Lake. He was masked, and had all the passengers out on the roadside with their hands thrown up over their heads while he was takin’ their valuables away from them.”

“It’s a dead cinch,” Buck Ashley observed, “that whenever there was a hold-up or a robbery, or a murder in cold blood for money, why everybody knew that the White Wolf was again in the hills and playin’ his cut-throat game for pelf and plunder, or mebbe just for revenge against the gringos, whom he hated like hell. Sometimes he was not heard of in these parts for two or three years, and then he showed up more blood-thirsty than ever. His hand was agin every man, and it looked like as every man’s hand was agin him.”

“I’ve been told,” said Dick Willoughby, “that when the White Wolf was a boy he saved the life of the old highwayman, Joaquin Murietta.”

“Yes, them are facts,” replied Tom Baker. “Leastways I’ve heard say so. They claim that he saved Murietta’s life from a posse of deputies one night, and altho’ the White Wolf was only a boy at that time, yet a heap of people think he’s the only livin’ soul who knows the whereabouts and location of the secret cavern where Joaquin Murietta planted his loot, amountin’, they say, to millions of dollars in gold and jewels and valuables of all kinds. The retreat always proved a safe one for the murderin’ gang, and now they’re gone no one even to this day can find the place. It’s somewhere on San Antonio Rancho, but where? The White Wolf kept his secret well.”

“If old Pierre Luzon ever gets out of San Quentin,” remarked the storekeeper, “I guess he could tell, but he’s up for life. He was nabbed in that same Tulare Lake affair ‘bout which Tom had been talkin’.”

“Yes,” said the sheriff, “two others were shot dead before they got back to the mountains. The White Wolf and Pierre were ridin’ alone when the Frenchie’s horse stumbled. They picked him up insensible, a broken leg and concussion of the brain, and he was the only one of the gang who ever went to jail.”

“God ‘lmighty,” exclaimed Buck, “old Pierre used to sit around in this here store day after day, smokin’ an old foreign-lookin’ pipe, and hardly speakin’ a word. He used to pretend he knew no English. We never once suspected that he was one of Don Manuel’s bunch – always thought of him as an old sheepherder, a bit off his nut, who had saved a few dollars and was takin’ things easy. And hell, all the time he was the White Wolf’s look-out man, makin’ note of everything and passin’ the word o’ warnin’ when there was talk of the sheriff gettin’ busy.”

“I’ll allow Pierre Luzon fooled me proper,” concurred Tom Baker. “However, he got what was cornin’ to him all right, a life sentence, though he ought to have been hanged. Well, perhaps it is only the White Wolf and Pierre Luzon who now know the cave where Joaquin Murietta cached his treasure.”

“And Guadalupe perhaps as well,” remarked Buck Ashley.

“Yes, perhaps Guadalupe also,” assented the sheriff. “But the White Wolf keeps guard over her.”

“That’s the real White Wolf this time,” laughed

Dick Willoughby, with a nod toward the young lieutenant, who had been listening intently to the tale of weird romance.

“The real White Wolf?” replied Munson, enquiringly. “You’ve got me all tangled up. What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know how Don Manuel came by his name of the White Wolf?” asked the sheriff.

“No, all this folk lore is new to me.”

“Why, gosh all hemlock! He is named because of a darn big white wolf that has been seen at different times in this here country for a hundred years.”

“Wolves don’t live so long,” protested the lieutenant incredulously.

“Well, this one does,” retorted Tom, curtly. “Leastwise he’s been seen from time to time since ever I can remember. In the old days they named the White Wolf Rancho after this monster animal. It has a charmed life. No one can kill this big fellow, altho’ lots of shots have been fired at him. And the same was true of Don Manuel de Valencia. He escaped so often that folks believed his life a charmed one. And so they called him the White Wolf.”

“I saw the white wolf once myself,” said Buck Ashley, “the real white wolf that even now, as Tom says, guards old Guadalupe and makes it best for young fellows like you, Jack Rover, to leave the squaw alone when she makes back for her hidin’ place in the mountains. I’ll never forget that morning, although it’s more or less twenty years ago. The great shaggy brute was following Guadalupe along the trail like a Newfoundland dog. In those days I was out on the hills roundin’ up some mavericks. One of the calves broke from the herd and scampered along a trail that led directly in front of the old squaw. And say, boys, would you believe it? From less than half a mile away I saw with my own eyes that monster devil of a white wolf – white as the driven snow – make one terrific mad leap and grab that yearlin’ by the neck. Guadalupe spotted me and disappeared, and the white wolf trotted after her round the bend, carryin’ the dead calf in its jaws as a cat carries a mouse.”

“Did you not shoot at the wolf?” excitedly asked Lieutenant Munson.

“Shoot, hell! What would have been the use? Didn’t you hear what Tom Baker said? White wolves have charmed lives whether they go on two legs or four.”

CHAPTER III – Feminine Attractions

TOM BAKER, the sheriff, cleared his throat. “You fellers, I’m assoomin’, are all boys. I have been loafin’ ‘round in this man’s land for forty years. I was here the day Don Manuel had been buryin’ his old father and mother from the little Mission Church, less than a quarter of a mile from where we are settin’. He was standin’ right in front of this store when young Ben Thurston and two of his ranch hands rode up. If ever I saw real bravery it was that mornin’. Don’t take much bravery to do some things heroic when you have your artillery handy, but it requires the real stuff when you’re gunless.

“Young Thurston spoke to his companions and they drew their guns and kept them leveled at Don Manuel as their boss dismounted.

“Don Manuel was one of the handsomest young fellers I ever laid my two eyes on. He walked straight up to Thurston, and notwithstandin’ the two loaded pieces of artillery was pintin’ straight at him said:

“‘Ben Thurston, you are the man who killed my sister.’

“‘You are a damned liar!’ retorted Thurston.

“‘Yes, you killed her,’ went on Don Manuel. I found this button in her dead hand, and right there, by God! is where it came from. Look at your coat. Your life shall pay for this dastardly murder. If I had my gun I would settle the matter now, notwithstandin’ that today I have been burying my beloved father and mother.’

“When young Thurston heard about there bein’ no gun, he snatched the tell-tale button from his accuser’s hand, swung himself into his saddle, laughed mockingly, and with his quirt struck Don Manuel across the face; then he wheeled round his pony and rode away with his bodyguards in a cloud of dust.

“God! I will never forget it. Don Manuel stood there, as white as a piece of paper, and never moved for a whole minute. The quirt had drawn the blood from his face in one long streak. At last he turned away with a resolve in his eyes – one of them there terrible resolves that change the life of a man, and went back to the little church to finish the last sad rites to his people. It’s my opinion Don Manuel, from that very hour, turned bandit in his heart and took oath to murder all the gringos in California.

“As I said before, that was thirty years back, and mebbe a little more, and I have never seen him since. But we all heard of him good and plenty. He certainly left a red trail.”

A silence followed. Presently Buck Ashley in the way of explanation, said:

“That tombstone on his sister’s grave was put up one night. Nobody saw it done, but everyone knows, of course, it was the work of Don Manuel. It has just one word – ’Hermana’ – chiseled on the cross of white marble. That’s the Mexican for ‘sister,’ guess you all know. So the name Rosetta is only remembered by old-stagers here, like Tom Baker and me. And we ain’t forgotten her pretty face either. Poor little girl!”

“A doggoned shame,” muttered the sheriff, meditatively, his eyes cast down.

“How about the law?” asked Lieutenant Munson. “The law!” exclaimed Baker, raising his eyes and flashing a look of withering contempt. “What kind o’ law was there in those days and in these parts? A gun was usually both judge and jury. Besides, with the only bit of evidence gone, how could Don Manuel prove anything agin a rich young feller like Ben Thurston?”