Roads of Destiny

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She bent upon the young man a long look of the most agonized
questioning. Then her great black eyes turned, and her gaze rested
upon his left hand. And then with a sob, not loud, but seeming to
shake the room, she cried "_Hijo mio!_" and caught the Llano Kid to
her heart.

A month afterward the Kid came to the consulate in response to a
message sent by Thacker.

He looked the young Spanish _caballero_. His clothes were imported,
and the wiles of the jewellers had not been spent upon him in vain.
A more than respectable diamond shone on his finger as he rolled a
shuck cigarette.

"What's doing?" asked Thacker.

"Nothing much," said the Kid calmly. "I eat my first iguana steak
to-day. They're them big lizards, you _sabe_? I reckon, though, that
frijoles and side bacon would do me about as well. Do you care for
iguanas, Thacker?"

"No, nor for some other kinds of reptiles," said Thacker.

It was three in the afternoon, and in another hour he would be in
his state of beatitude.

"It's time you were making good, sonny," he went on, with an ugly
look on his reddened face. "You're not playing up to me square.
You've been the prodigal son for four weeks now, and you could have
had veal for every meal on a gold dish if you'd wanted it. Now, Mr.
Kid, do you think it's right to leave me out so long on a husk diet?
What's the trouble? Don't you get your filial eyes on anything
that looks like cash in the Casa Blanca? Don't tell me you don't.
Everybody knows where old Urique keeps his stuff. It's U.S.
currency, too; he don't accept anything else. What's doing? Don't
say 'nothing' this time."

"Why, sure," said the Kid, admiring his diamond, "there's plenty of
money up there. I'm no judge of collateral in bunches, but I will
undertake for to say that I've seen the rise of $50,000 at a time in
that tin grub box that my adopted father calls his safe. And he lets
me carry the key sometimes just to show me that he knows I'm the
real little Francisco that strayed from the herd a long time ago."

"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked Thacker, angrily. "Don't you
forget that I can upset your apple-cart any day I want to. If old
Urique knew you were an imposter, what sort of things would happen
to you? Oh, you don't know this country, Mr. Texas Kid. The laws
here have got mustard spread between 'em. These people here'd
stretch you out like a frog that had been stepped on, and give you
about fifty sticks at every corner of the plaza. And they'd wear
every stick out, too. What was left of you they'd feed to
alligators."

"I might just as well tell you now, pardner," said the Kid, sliding
down low on his steamer chair, "that things are going to stay just
as they are. They're about right now."

"What do you mean?" asked Thacker, rattling the bottom of his glass
on his desk.

"The scheme's off," said the Kid. "And whenever you have the
pleasure of speaking to me address me as Don Francisco Urique. I'll
guarantee I'll answer to it. We'll let Colonel Urique keep his
money. His little tin safe is as good as the time-locker in the
First National Bank of Laredo as far as you and me are concerned."

"You're going to throw me down, then, are you?" said the consul.

"Sure," said the Kid cheerfully. "Throw you down. That's it. And now
I'll tell you why. The first night I was up at the colonel's house
they introduced me to a bedroom. No blankets on the floor--a real
room, with a bed and things in it. And before I was asleep, in comes
this artificial mother of mine and tucks in the covers. 'Panchito,'
she says, 'my little lost one, God has brought you back to me. I
bless His name forever.' It was that, or some truck like that, she
said. And down comes a drop or two of rain and hits me on the nose.
And all that stuck by me, Mr. Thacker. And it's been that way ever
since. And it's got to stay that way. Don't you think that it's for
what's in it for me, either, that I say so. If you have any such
ideas, keep 'em to yourself. I haven't had much truck with women in
my life, and no mothers to speak of, but here's a lady that we've
got to keep fooled. Once she stood it; twice she won't. I'm a
low-down wolf, and the devil may have sent me on this trail instead
of God, but I'll travel it to the end. And now, don't forget that
I'm Don Francisco Urique whenever you happen to mention my name."

"I'll expose you to-day, you--you double-dyed traitor," stammered
Thacker.

The Kid arose and, without violence, took Thacker by the throat with
a hand of steel, and shoved him slowly into a corner. Then he drew
from under his left arm his pearl-handled .45 and poked the cold
muzzle of it against the consul's mouth.

"I told you why I come here," he said, with his old freezing smile.
"If I leave here, you'll be the reason. Never forget it, pardner.
Now, what is my name?"

"Er--Don Francisco Urique," gasped Thacker.

From outside came a sound of wheels, and the shouting of some one,
and the sharp thwacks of a wooden whipstock upon the backs of fat
horses.

The Kid put up his gun, and walked toward the door. But he turned
again and came back to the trembling Thacker, and held up his left
hand with its back toward the consul.

"There's one more reason," he said slowly, "why things have got to
stand as they are. The fellow I killed in Laredo had one of them
same pictures on his left hand."

Outside, the ancient landau of Don Santos Urique rattled to the
door. The coachman ceased his bellowing. Senora Urique, in a
voluminous gay gown of white lace and flying ribbons, leaned forward
with a happy look in her great soft eyes.

"Are you within, dear son?" she called, in the rippling Castilian.

"_Madre mia, yo vengo_ [mother, I come]," answered the young Don
Francisco Urique.




IX

THE PASSING OF BLACK EAGLE


For some months of a certain year a grim bandit infested the Texas
border along the Rio Grande. Peculiarly striking to the optic nerve
was this notorious marauder. His personality secured him the title
of "Black Eagle, the Terror of the Border." Many fearsome tales are
on record concerning the doings of him and his followers. Suddenly,
in the space of a single minute, Black Eagle vanished from earth.
He was never heard of again. His own band never even guessed the
mystery of his disappearance. The border ranches and settlements
feared he would come again to ride and ravage the mesquite flats.
He never will. It is to disclose the fate of Black Eagle that this
narrative is written.

The initial movement of the story is furnished by the foot of a
bartender in St. Louis. His discerning eye fell upon the form
of Chicken Ruggles as he pecked with avidity at the free lunch.
Chicken was a "hobo." He had a long nose like the bill of a fowl,
an inordinate appetite for poultry, and a habit of gratifying it
without expense, which accounts for the name given him by his fellow
vagrants.

Physicians agree that the partaking of liquids at meal times is
not a healthy practice. The hygiene of the saloon promulgates the
opposite. Chicken had neglected to purchase a drink to accompany
his meal. The bartender rounded the counter, caught the injudicious
diner by the ear with a lemon squeezer, led him to the door and
kicked him into the street.

Thus the mind of Chicken was brought to realize the signs of
coming winter. The night was cold; the stars shone with unkindly
brilliancy; people were hurrying along the streets in two egotistic,
jostling streams. Men had donned their overcoats, and Chicken knew
to an exact percentage the increased difficulty of coaxing dimes
from those buttoned-in vest pockets. The time had come for his
annual exodus to the south.

A little boy, five or six years old, stood looking with covetous
eyes in a confectioner's window. In one small hand he held an empty
two-ounce vial; in the other he grasped tightly something flat and
round, with a shining milled edge. The scene presented a field of
operations commensurate to Chicken's talents and daring. After
sweeping the horizon to make sure that no official tug was cruising
near, he insidiously accosted his prey. The boy, having been early
taught by his household to regard altruistic advances with extreme
suspicion, received the overtures coldly.

Then Chicken knew that he must make one of those desperate,
nerve-shattering plunges into speculation that fortune sometimes
requires of those who would win her favour. Five cents was his
capital, and this he must risk against the chance of winning what
lay within the close grasp of the youngster's chubby hand. It was
a fearful lottery, Chicken knew. But he must accomplish his end by
strategy, since he had a wholesome terror of plundering infants
by force. Once, in a park, driven by hunger, he had committed
an onslaught upon a bottle of peptonized infant's food in the
possession of an occupant of a baby carriage. The outraged infant
had so promptly opened its mouth and pressed the button that
communicated with the welkin that help arrived, and Chicken did his
thirty days in a snug coop. Wherefore he was, as he said, "leary of
kids."

Beginning artfully to question the boy concerning his choice of
sweets, he gradually drew out the information he wanted. Mamma said
he was to ask the drug store man for ten cents' worth of paregoric
in the bottle; he was to keep his hand shut tight over the dollar;
he must not stop to talk to anyone in the street; he must ask the
drug-store man to wrap up the change and put it in the pocket of
his trousers. Indeed, they had pockets--two of them! And he liked
chocolate creams best.

Chicken went into the store and turned plunger. He invested his
entire capital in C.A.N.D.Y. stocks, simply to pave the way to the
greater risk following.

He gave the sweets to the youngster, and had the satisfaction of
perceiving that confidence was established. After that it was easy
to obtain leadership of the expedition; to take the investment by
the hand and lead it to a nice drug store he knew of in the same
block. There Chicken, with a parental air, passed over the dollar
and called for the medicine, while the boy crunched his candy, glad
to be relieved of the responsibility of the purchase. And then
the successful investor, searching his pockets, found an overcoat
button--the extent of his winter trousseau--and, wrapping it
carefully, placed the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding
juvenility. Setting the youngster's face homeward, and patting him
benevolently on the back--for Chicken's heart was as soft as those
of his feathered namesakes--the speculator quit the market with a
profit of 1,700 per cent. on his invested capital.

Two hours later an Iron Mountain freight engine pulled out of the
railroad yards, Texas bound, with a string of empties. In one of the
cattle cars, half buried in excelsior, Chicken lay at ease. Beside
him in his nest was a quart bottle of very poor whisky and a paper
bag of bread and cheese. Mr. Ruggles, in his private car, was on his
trip south for the winter season.

For a week that car was trundled southward, shifted, laid over, and
manipulated after the manner of rolling stock, but Chicken stuck
to it, leaving it only at necessary times to satisfy his hunger
and thirst. He knew it must go down to the cattle country, and
San Antonio, in the heart of it, was his goal. There the air was
salubrious and mild; the people indulgent and long-suffering. The
bartenders there would not kick him. If he should eat too long or
too often at one place they would swear at him as if by rote and
without heat. They swore so drawlingly, and they rarely paused short
of their full vocabulary, which was copious, so that Chicken had
often gulped a good meal during the process of the vituperative
prohibition. The season there was always spring-like; the plazas
were pleasant at night, with music and gaiety; except during the
slight and infrequent cold snaps one could sleep comfortably out of
doors in case the interiors should develop inhospitability.

At Texarkana his car was switched to the I. and G. N. Then still
southward it trailed until, at length, it crawled across the
Colorado bridge at Austin, and lined out, straight as an arrow, for
the run to San Antonio.

When the freight halted at that town Chicken was fast asleep. In ten
minutes the train was off again for Laredo, the end of the road.
Those empty cattle cars were for distribution along the line at
points from which the ranches shipped their stock.

When Chicken awoke his car was stationary. Looking out between the
slats he saw it was a bright, moonlit night. Scrambling out, he saw
his car with three others abandoned on a little siding in a wild
and lonesome country. A cattle pen and chute stood on one side of
the track. The railroad bisected a vast, dim ocean of prairie, in
the midst of which Chicken, with his futile rolling stock, was as
completely stranded as was Robinson with his land-locked boat.

A white post stood near the rails. Going up to it, Chicken read the
letters at the top, S. A. 90. Laredo was nearly as far to the south.
He was almost a hundred miles from any town. Coyotes began to yelp
in the mysterious sea around him. Chicken felt lonesome. He had
lived in Boston without an education, in Chicago without nerve, in
Philadelphia without a sleeping place, in New York without a pull,
and in Pittsburg sober, and yet he had never felt so lonely as now.

Suddenly through the intense silence, he heard the whicker of a
horse. The sound came from the side of the track toward the east,
and Chicken began to explore timorously in that direction. He
stepped high along the mat of curly mesquit grass, for he was afraid
of everything there might be in this wilderness--snakes, rats,
brigands, centipedes, mirages, cowboys, fandangoes, tarantulas,
tamales--he had read of them in the story papers. Rounding a clump
of prickly pear that reared high its fantastic and menacing array of
rounded heads, he was struck to shivering terror by a snort and a
thunderous plunge, as the horse, himself startled, bounded away some
fifty yards, and then resumed his grazing. But here was the one
thing in the desert that Chicken did not fear. He had been reared on
a farm; he had handled horses, understood them, and could ride.

Approaching slowly and speaking soothingly, he followed the animal,
which, after its first flight, seemed gentle enough, and secured the
end of the twenty-foot lariat that dragged after him in the grass.
It required him but a few moments to contrive the rope into an
ingenious nose-bridle, after the style of the Mexican _borsal_. In
another he was upon the horse's back and off at a splendid lope,
giving the animal free choice of direction. "He will take me
somewhere," said Chicken to himself.

It would have been a thing of joy, that untrammelled gallop over the
moonlit prairie, even to Chicken, who loathed exertion, but that his
mood was not for it. His head ached; a growing thirst was upon him;
the "somewhere" whither his lucky mount might convey him was full of
dismal peradventure.

And now he noted that the horse moved to a definite goal. Where the
prairie lay smooth he kept his course straight as an arrow's toward
the east. Deflected by hill or arroyo or impractical spinous brakes,
he quickly flowed again into the current, charted by his unerring
instinct. At last, upon the side of a gentle rise, he suddenly
subsided to a complacent walk. A stone's cast away stood a little
mott of coma trees; beneath it a _jacal_ such as the Mexicans
erect--a one-room house of upright poles daubed with clay and roofed
with grass or tule reeds. An experienced eye would have estimated
the spot as the headquarters of a small sheep ranch. In the
moonlight the ground in the nearby corral showed pulverized to
a level smoothness by the hoofs of the sheep. Everywhere was
carelessly distributed the paraphernalia of the place--ropes,
bridles, saddles, sheep pelts, wool sacks, feed troughs, and camp
litter. The barrel of drinking water stood in the end of the
two-horse wagon near the door. The harness was piled, promiscuous,
upon the wagon tongue, soaking up the dew.

Chicken slipped to earth, and tied the horse to a tree. He halloed
again and again, but the house remained quiet. The door stood open,
and he entered cautiously. The light was sufficient for him to see
that no one was at home. The room was that of a bachelor ranchman
who was content with the necessaries of life. Chicken rummaged
intelligently until he found what he had hardly dared hope for--a
small, brown jug that still contained something near a quart of his
desire.

Half an hour later, Chicken--now a gamecock of hostile
aspect--emerged from the house with unsteady steps. He had drawn
upon the absent ranchman's equipment to replace his own ragged
attire. He wore a suit of coarse brown ducking, the coat being a
sort of rakish bolero, jaunty to a degree. Boots he had donned, and
spurs that whirred with every lurching step. Buckled around him was
a belt full of cartridges with a big six-shooter in each of its two
holsters.

Prowling about, he found blankets, a saddle and bridle with which he
caparisoned his steed. Again mounting, he rode swiftly away, singing
a loud and tuneless song.



Bud King's band of desperadoes, outlaws and horse and cattle thieves
were in camp at a secluded spot on the bank of the Frio. Their
depredations in the Rio Grande country, while no bolder than usual,
had been advertised more extensively, and Captain Kinney's company
of rangers had been ordered down to look after them. Consequently,
Bud King, who was a wise general, instead of cutting out a hot trail
for the upholders of the law, as his men wished to do, retired for
the time to the prickly fastnesses of the Frio valley.

Though the move was a prudent one, and not incompatible with Bud's
well-known courage, it raised dissension among the members of the
band. In fact, while they thus lay ingloriously _perdu_ in the
brush, the question of Bud King's fitness for the leadership was
argued, with closed doors, as it were, by his followers. Never
before had Bud's skill or efficiency been brought to criticism; but
his glory was waning (and such is glory's fate) in the light of a
newer star. The sentiment of the band was crystallizing into the
opinion that Black Eagle could lead them with more lustre, profit,
and distinction.

This Black Eagle--sub-titled the "Terror of the Border"--had been a
member of the gang about three months.

One night while they were in camp on the San Miguel water-hole a
solitary horseman on the regulation fiery steed dashed in among
them. The newcomer was of a portentous and devastating aspect. A
beak-like nose with a predatory curve projected above a mass of
bristling, blue-black whiskers. His eye was cavernous and fierce.
He was spurred, sombreroed, booted, garnished with revolvers,
abundantly drunk, and very much unafraid. Few people in the country
drained by the Rio Bravo would have cared thus to invade alone the
camp of Bud King. But this fell bird swooped fearlessly upon them
and demanded to be fed.

Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your
enemy pass your way you must feed him before you shoot him. You
must empty your larder into him before you empty your lead. So the
stranger of undeclared intentions was set down to a mighty feast.

A talkative bird he was, full of most marvellous loud tales and
exploits, and speaking a language at times obscure but never
colourless. He was a new sensation to Bud King's men, who rarely
encountered new types. They hung, delighted, upon his vainglorious
boasting, the spicy strangeness of his lingo, his contemptuous
familiarity with life, the world, and remote places, and the
extravagant frankness with which he conveyed his sentiments.

To their guest the band of outlaws seemed to be nothing more than a
congregation of country bumpkins whom he was "stringing for grub"
just as he would have told his stories at the back door of a
farmhouse to wheedle a meal. And, indeed, his ignorance was not
without excuse, for the "bad man" of the Southwest does not run to
extremes. Those brigands might justly have been taken for a little
party of peaceable rustics assembled for a fish-fry or pecan
gathering. Gentle of manner, slouching of gait, soft-voiced,
unpicturesquely clothed; not one of them presented to the eye any
witness of the desperate records they had earned.

For two days the glittering stranger within the camp was feasted.
Then, by common consent, he was invited to become a member of the
band. He consented, presenting for enrollment the prodigious name
of "Captain Montressor." This name was immediately overruled by the
band, and "Piggy" substituted as a compliment to the awful and
insatiate appetite of its owner.

Thus did the Texas border receive the most spectacular brigand that
ever rode its chaparral.

For the next three months Bud King conducted business as usual,
escaping encounters with law officers and being content with
reasonable profits. The band ran off some very good companies of
horses from the ranges, and a few bunches of fine cattle which they
got safely across the Rio Grande and disposed of to fair advantage.
Often the band would ride into the little villages and Mexican
settlements, terrorizing the inhabitants and plundering for the
provisions and ammunition they needed. It was during these bloodless
raids that Piggy's ferocious aspect and frightful voice gained him a
renown more widespread and glorious than those other gentle-voiced
and sad-faced desperadoes could have acquired in a lifetime.

The Mexicans, most apt in nomenclature, first called him The Black
Eagle, and used to frighten the babes by threatening them with tales
of the dreadful robber who carried off little children in his great
beak. Soon the name extended, and Black Eagle, the Terror of the
Border, became a recognized factor in exaggerated newspaper reports
and ranch gossip.

The country from the Nueces to the Rio Grande was a wild but fertile
stretch, given over to the sheep and cattle ranches. Range was free;
the inhabitants were few; the law was mainly a letter, and the
pirates met with little opposition until the flaunting and garish
Piggy gave the band undue advertisement. Then Kinney's ranger
company headed for those precincts, and Bud King knew that it meant
grim and sudden war or else temporary retirement. Regarding the risk
to be unnecessary, he drew off his band to an almost inaccessible
spot on the bank of the Frio. Wherefore, as has been said,
dissatisfaction arose among the members, and impeachment proceedings
against Bud were premeditated, with Black Eagle in high favour for
the succession. Bud King was not unaware of the sentiment, and he
called aside Cactus Taylor, his trusted lieutenant, to discuss it.

"If the boys," said Bud, "ain't satisfied with me, I'm willing
to step out. They're buckin' against my way of handlin' 'em. And
'specially because I concludes to hit the brush while Sam Kinney is
ridin' the line. I saves 'em from bein' shot or sent up on a state
contract, and they up and says I'm no good."

"It ain't so much that," explained Cactus, "as it is they're plum
locoed about Piggy. They want them whiskers and that nose of his to
split the wind at the head of the column."

"There's somethin' mighty seldom about Piggy," declared Bud,
musingly. "I never yet see anything on the hoof that he exactly
grades up with. He can shore holler a plenty, and he straddles a
hoss from where you laid the chunk. But he ain't never been smoked
yet. You know, Cactus, we ain't had a row since he's been with us.
Piggy's all right for skearin' the greaser kids and layin' waste a
cross-roads store. I reckon he's the finest canned oyster buccaneer
and cheese pirate that ever was, but how's his appetite for
fightin'? I've knowed some citizens you'd think was starvin' for
trouble get a bad case of dyspepsy the first dose of lead they had
to take."

"He talks all spraddled out," said Cactus, "'bout the rookuses he's
been in. He claims to have saw the elephant and hearn the owl."

"I know," replied Bud, using the cowpuncher's expressive phrase of
skepticism, "but it sounds to me!"

This conversation was held one night in camp while the other members
of the band--eight in number--were sprawling around the fire,
lingering over their supper. When Bud and Cactus ceased talking they
heard Piggy's formidable voice holding forth to the others as usual
while he was engaged in checking, though never satisfying, his
ravening appetite.

"Wat's de use," he was saying, "of chasin' little red cowses and
hosses 'round for t'ousands of miles? Dere ain't nuttin' in it.
Gallopin' t'rough dese bushes and briers, and gettin' a t'irst dat a
brewery couldn't put out, and missin' meals! Say! You know what I'd
do if I was main finger of dis bunch? I'd stick up a train. I'd blow
de express car and make hard dollars where you guys get wind. Youse
makes me tired. Dis sook-cow kind of cheap sport gives me a pain."

Later on, a deputation waited on Bud. They stood on one leg,
chewed mesquit twigs and circumlocuted, for they hated to hurt his
feelings. Bud foresaw their business, and made it easy for them.
Bigger risks and larger profits was what they wanted.