Part 7

When Polly awoke, the sun was already down, and twilight was settling. Fearing that she had delayed the departure, she sprang to her feet. But Blandy was still snoring. And close at hand was a saddleless burro, head lowered and fast asleep.

She began to call: “Harvey! Oh, Harv!”

The snoring ceased. The yellow umbrella toppled. Blandy’s tall figure rose. “Gosh! but ain’t I snoozed!” he exclaimed.

She called again: “Harvey! Where are you? Jeff! One of the burros is gone!”

“Oh, I guess he’s there, all right,” answered Blandy. “You know, a donk’s the same colour as the ground.”

“But he _isn’t_ there,” persisted Polly. “Or Harvey, either.” And as Blandy hastened by, she joined him.

When they halted, each scanned the desert. Then, “You’re right,” Blandy admitted gravely. “That blamed burro must a-strayed. I never _did_ like the little cuss. He had a bad look in one eye.”

She raised an anxious face to his. “The donkey isn’t to blame,” she declared. “Harvey’s left us.”

“No! Why? Sore about your comin’?”

“He _told_ me to come.”

Blandy strode over to the packs. And a first glimpse told him that Polly was right. Feed and provisions were missing, and all but one of the uncached canteens.

“Jeff!” Polly had followed him, and she spoke in a frightened whisper. “Don’t drink any of this water till you’ve given the donkey some.”

Blandy stared down at her. “Why not?” he asked, perplexed.

“Don’t--don’t ask me, Jeff.”

His face went grim with understanding. “I guess I understand,” he said.

The canteen that Patton had left behind him was thoroughly shaken and the donkey was given a generous drink. Then Blandy left the camp to gather mesquite roots. When he returned, a half-hour later, the little animal was resting, head swagged low. But while Blandy was watching him, the shaggy head came up and the donkey brayed--loud and long, after which he fell to yawning, ears flopped to either side lazily. Plainly the water had done him no harm.

Blandy set to work to build a fire. “You see,” he said, “Patton might change his mind about leavin’ us.”

By now, twilight had merged into night. On every side stretched the desert, as level, dark and melancholy as a sea. The mountain range to the northward, with its charred front one great inky shadow, was a dead island, rising out of a black waste of water. Blandy lighted the beacon, and it flamed up like the signal of someone shipwrecked.

They kept the fire burning steadily. They listened for far-off cries. But they heard no cries, only constant movements in the blackness about the camp. Heretofore, the desert had withheld nearly all evidence of animate things. Now, sitting and waiting, they caught the soft _pad, pad_ of dog-like feet, the flutter of small wings.

At dawn, Blandy set off on a hunt for tracks. He first circled the camp. The only outgoing trail he found ended near by in the dry bed of a stream. He followed the stream-bed toward Searles. When he had gone several miles, he retraced his steps and passed the camp on his way toward the mountains.

It was late afternoon when he returned, tired out. But he came into sight waving his hat cheerily. “It’s all right,” he announced. “He went toward the mine.”

While they were preparing to break camp and follow Patton, Polly saw that Blandy was digging up one of the two canteens he had cached.

“On the way home, Jeff, can we make it from here to Searles on one?” she asked.

“Easy.”

“And from the mine to here, Jeff?”

“We’ll ketch a canteenful where it drips into that bowl in the rock.”

When they started forward, they were compelled to go slowly, not only because of Blandy’s weariness, but because Polly was foot-sore, though at first she strove to conceal the fact by keeping in the rear. At the end of five or six miles, however, she found herself unable to go farther.

“Oh, I thought I’d be all right after so much rest,” she declared, out of patience with her own weakness.

Blandy was all gentle consideration. “I don’t wonder your feet hurt you,” he answered. “You ain’t used to so much walkin’. Now, just you wait.”

Off came pack-saddle, load and all. Then the saddle-blanket was replaced, with the shelter sacking on top of it, folded to make a comfortable seat. And soon Polly was mounted on the donkey. Behind her, balanced carefully, were two large canteens, a flour sack of provisions, and feed for the burro. She held the yellow umbrella over her head.

They travelled until darkness made it impossible to follow Patton’s tracks, when camp was made again.

“But if Harvey went straight to the mine,” argued Polly, “What’s the use of trailing him? Why not just go ahead?”

“For the reason that yesterday Patton had the mine located thirty mile left of where it is. S’pose he was to git the same idear again?”

Once more Blandy hunted mesquite roots. And far into the night his signal-fire lit the swells and hollows of the desert.

At break of day they took up their journey once more, with Polly riding again, and drowsing now and then as the donkey picked his way along.

It was the middle of the morning when a low cry from Blandy suddenly startled her into wakefulness. He had come short, halting the donkey, and was examining the ground.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Here’s a man’s tracks and a burro’s, crossin’ this trail at right angles, and goin’ west. They’re fresher’n the ones we been follerin’.”

“Harvey’s?”

“Shore.”

“What’ll we do, Jeff?”

“Strike out after him. He’s makin’ for that wrong spur!”

They turned aside, and started off in the new direction.

During the remainder of the morning, they were headed almost due west. But at noon Patton’s footprints led him toward the north-west, then toward the north--directly away from Searles.

Shortly after noon, they made an alarming discovery. It was Patton’s donkey, stretched lifeless on the baked ground. Away from the carcass a grey wolf-form raced, and was lost in the grey of sand and sage.

“Short of water,” said Blandy, and shook his head.

Polly covered her eyes. “Oh, poor little thing!” she whispered. “Jeff, give mine a good drink.”

He came to stand beside her. “Polly,” he said, “I can’t. And if we’re goin’ to keep follerin’ this trail and locate Patton, this little animal”--he laid a hand on the donkey’s neck--“has got to go.”

“Are _we_ short of water?”

“There’s a good deal left. But I ain’t give the donkey a swaller since yesterday noon. We got to be savin’. It’s likely that Patton’ll need water bad.”

Soon the tracks they were following turned due east.

“He run outen water,” Blandy explained gravely. “He’s headed back to the bowl.”

But when they, too, turned about to start back, their burro abruptly stopped, and refused to be coaxed or urged forward.

“Yas, git down,” said Blandy as Polly prepared to dismount. “And go on for about a quarter of a mile. I’ll bring the things.”

She obeyed, fairly running to escape the sound of the dreaded pistol-shot. When he came trudging up to her, carrying a canteen and the provisions sack, she was seated in a heap, her face hid in her hands.

“There! There!” he said consolingly. “We _had_ to leave him.”

They hurried forward as fast as they were able, Blandy compelling Polly to take a swallow of water every little while, but drinking none himself. Before long Patton’s trail was giving them much concern. It veered to the right for a few rods, then it veered to the left, winding crazily.

“’Fraid he was just a little off his head,” said Blandy. “Nothin’ to worry about, though. We’ll find him.”

But their concern steadily increased as they travelled. For by late afternoon, with the bowl still at some distance, they found no more footprints to follow--only two winding marks. Patton was dragging himself forward on his knees!

They came upon his hat next. An hour later, the sun glittered on something a short way in advance. It was a canteen. Its woolen covering had been torn from it in ragged bits that strewed the ground. And about the round opening were the marks of teeth.

“Hurry!” breathed Blandy.

After that, neither one spoke, but stumbled on, Blandy half-supporting Polly, both watching eagerly for a moving speck in the narrowing stretch between them and the base of the spur ahead.

At sundown, they neared the bowl. Blandy began to call: “Patton! Oh, _Patton_! Are you there?”

A few steps farther, he came short, putting out an arm to stop Polly.

For Patton was there, stretched flat upon his back, his arms thrown wide to either side. And beside him, with its black wings outspread, lay a great bird, claws up and feathers ruffled.

BUENAS NOCHES

Scarlet fuchsias on a swaying branch freckled the ’dobe wall behind Loretta’s perch. The parrot, her claws wide apart, her brilliant rudder tilting to balance her grey body, industriously snapped at the blossoms. One secured at last, she turned slowly about and, with infinite care, let it drop upon the open pages of Padre Alonzo’s book.

The padre brushed the flower away and glanced up. “_Buenos días, señor!_” clacked Loretta; “_buenos días! buenos días! buenos días!_”

“Good-day to thyself,” retorted the padre. He spoke in Spanish, shaking a stout finger. “And tear not the flowers again. They be the last of the kind till after the New Year. So take warning, I say, lest thou find thyself thrust without the garden.”

Loretta recognised displeasure in his voice. She mumbled an inquiring “_Ga-a-wk! ga-a-wk!_” and shifted thoughtfully from foot to foot. But, presently, the padre having resumed his reading, she turned once more to catch at the swaying branch.

When a second fuchsia came fluttering down to his hand, Padre Alonzo uncrossed his sandals and rose. “Oh! oh! oh!” he cried, wagging his close-cropped head so vigorously that the very beads of his rosary tinkled together. “Thou art the naughtiest bird in all of California! What if Padre Anzar finds thee despoiling his plant? He will put thee again where thou must fight to keep thy feathers--in the kitchen with the cats!”

At the mention of cats a startling change came over the parrot. Her plumage ruffled, her eyes began to roll, she straightened on the perch, uttering hoarse cries of fear and defiance.

“Then be good,” he counselled, “be good. Or off thou’lt likely go. Me-e-ow! me-e-ow!”

And now Loretta moved nearer, anxious for friendly terms. “_Dame la mano_,” she suggested; “_a-a-aw, dame la mano. A-a-aw! a-a-aw!_” She balanced tremblingly on one leg, curling the other under her.

Padre Alonzo put the stout finger into the proffered claw. “So, so,” he said. “And I shall not tattle. But tell me: What wouldst make thee forget to use thy sharp pruning shears? An apple? or seeds? or one of Gabrielda’s sweet bis--”

Loretta perked her head to one side. “_To-o-ny, To-o-ny, To-o-ny_,” she droned coaxingly.

The padre thrust his thumbs under the white cord of his girdle and broke into a guffaw. “Thou jade!” he teased. “Wilt have Tony, eh? Well, I go to find him.” He gathered in his brown cassock, preparatory to stepping over the cacti here bordering the garden path. “But look you, if he comes scrape not the gilt from the wires of his pretty cage.”

Another threatening shake of the finger, and the padre crossed the low, spiked hedge and waddled away through the sun.

When he came into sight a moment later round the dun wall of the mission, he carried a canary at his shoulder. “E-oo, e-oo,” he cooed, pattering forward. “Loretta wished thy company. Sst! sst! She is bad after thee, Tony! But be wary, little one, be wary.”

The advice was wholly ignored. For, spying the parrot, Tony was instantly transformed from a silent, dumpy ball of yellow to a slim, dapper songster with a swelling throat.

Loretta greeted him with uproarious laughter, and a jargon of Spanish, patois, but triumphant. She paced the horizontal piece that gave her perch the form of a cross. She _pur-r-red_ and _gu-r-red_. She swung by her curved beak and one leathery foot, shrilling her “_Buenos días, señor!_” Then, as the padre hung the cage to a nail in the trellis built against the wall, she changed her performance to the clamorous repeating of a mass.

Padre Alonzo was shocked. “Sst! sst!” he chided; “thou wicked big-ears!”

The noon angelus was ringing. He caught up book and gown. But before going he pulled at Loretta’s gaudy tail not unkindly, and chuckled as she edged toward Tony with many a naïve and fetching cock of her grey head.

* * * * *

High at the garden’s centre, nailed to a massive tree of wood, stood out the Sacrifice. From behind, fir and pine thrust their long green boughs, as if eager to screen that torn and unclad shape. From below, jasmine and geranium, carnation and rose, sent upward an unfailing incense.

That way, in the heat of mid-afternoon, came Padre Anzar. Thin-lipped, he was, and hollow-eyed. In one hand he held a trowel, in the other a knife. Down the front of his brown cassock, mingling at knee height with red brick stains from the chapel floor, were touches of fresh earth. Anzar the priest was for the moment Anzar the gardener.

He walked slowly, here stooping to right a stalk or jerk a weed, there stretching to pick a fading orange leaf from where it marred the glaucous sheen of its fellows. Fronting the figure, he paused long enough to whisper a prayer and make the holy sign. Then he rambled on, busy with trowel and blade.

But presently he came to a full and startled halt. He was beside the trellis up which climbed his treasured fuchsia. The cross-like perch of the parrot was beyond the bordering cacti, and unoccupied. Near by, upon its nail, hung the canary cage, with Tony going upstairs and down untiringly, eyeing his visitor with no uneasiness, greeting him, on the contrary, with saucy chirps. While underneath, spotting the ground in some profusion, and cast as it were at the feet of the garden’s singer, were scores of scarlet blossoms!

The padre’s look travelled from the scattered flowers to the vacant perch, from the perch to the naked branches swaying against the trellis, from the branches to the wide, warm top of the ’dobe wall. And there was Loretta, patrolling in unconcealed apprehension.

The instant he caught sight of her he knew her guilt. He pursed his thin lips. Then, letting fall trowel and knife, he straddled the hedge.

“I’ll wring thy neck for thee!” he vowed.

A sandal in the trellis, a light spring, and his head came even with her. She backed away, raising her wings a little, and _gawking_ in protest. He took a fresh grip on the wall, reached out and caught her like a chicken--by both legs.

Wild screeches rang through the garden, screeches that put the sparrows to flight and set the canary cheeping in fear. These were punctuated next by raucous appeals for “_Tony_” or gurgley parrot language.

The padre was down now, and standing on the path again. But he was not fulfilling his threat. Instead, he was viewing his captive angrily, yet in considerable indecision.

Loretta, on the other hand, was at no loss for a course of action. Between cries for the canary, demands for a handshake, and reiterated “_Good-days_,” she was vigorously trying her beak upon the padre’s fist.

But now a new factor upon the scene. Round the mission wall, waddling fast and propelling himself by his swinging arms, appeared Padre Alonzo. “Is’t the cats?” he asked as he came on; “oh, la! la! is’t the cats?”

Padre Anzar half-turned, scowling. For answer, he only pointed to the severed fuchsias.

The other looked, covering any regret with simulated astonishment. “These were dropping of themselves yesterday,” he began between breaths. “They--they fell fast in the night--er?” He came beside the other now, partly to support the suspended Loretta in his hands. “I saw them--truly.”

“Bah!” And Padre Anzar gave Loretta such a shake that she tumbled, squawking and sputtering, from the other’s hands and again hung, heels above head, like a chicken caught for the block.

“She did but what the wind hadst done,” faltered Padre Alonzo. “Sst! sst!” (This to the parrot.) “Such language from a lady!”

“Ah-_ha!_” grunted Padre Anzar. “I _told_ thee not to buy a bird that was raised in a garrison town.”

“_To-o-ny! To-o-ny!_” pleaded the parrot. “_A-aw, To-ony!_”

“Yes,” he went on solemnly, addressing her, “and thou art of the devil, and hast as many tricks. Twice I forgave thee--once for shouting ‘Fire’ on St. John’s Day as the censer passed; again, for pulling the feathers out of Señor Esteban’s choice hen. But thou wilt not escape now. Now, thou’lt go to the kitchen and be shut in with Gabrielda’s black mouser. There thou shalt shed some quills.”

With this dire threat, he departed along the path, Loretta still hanging head down at his knee.

Scarcely a moment later a commotion sounded from the distance, a commotion muffled by ’dobe wall. First came the voice of old Gabrielda, then the clatter of an overturning pan, next the terror-stricken shrieks of Loretta. Presently, Padre Anzar appeared, his jaw set, his eyes shining with the look of duty done.

“She will be nicely scared this time,” he told Padre Alonzo. “She will match her busy beak with Tomasso’s claws, and she will remember hereafter to let my blossoms alone.”

“Perhaps,” began Padre Alonzo, deprecatingly, “perhaps ’twere as well to take her out of temptation’s way, to----”

Padre Anzar raised his shoulders, strode over to knife and trowel and caught them up. “Move her as thou wilt,” he said grumpily, “and the farther the better. Tony is proper for us, pretty and songful. But that parrot,”--he shook his tools as if they were Loretta--“how altogether useless and ugly and noisy and blasphemous and good-for-naught!”

With this he departed into the shrubbery.

Sounds were still coming from the kitchen--Gabrielda’s cracked voice, Loretta’s cries, the sullen yowling of a cat. Nodding sadly, Padre Alonzo waddled to the perch, vacant and formed like a cross. This he lifted and bore to a place along the wall opposite the great crucifix, where climbed no flowers. Then, smiling gently, as if with some tender thought, he waddled back to the trellis, took the cage from its nail, and, returning to the perch, hung Tony close beside.

* * * * *

Late that night, on coming out of the chapel, Padre Alonzo discovered a little black something blocking his way along the moonlit path. As he paused, leaning forward to peer, the black something sidled nearer him, and saluted.

“_Buenos noches!_” it said, its voice monotonous and human with grief and weariness; “_buenas noches! buenas noches!_”

The padre bent lower and lifted the parrot to the level of his face. “Aye, good-night truly, as thou sayest,” he repeated proudly. “Thou hast some wicked words of a garrison town, but thou knowest the difference between sun and moon.”

“_Aw, Lora_,” murmured the parrot; “_aw, Lo-ra! Lo-ra!_”

“Yes, Tomasso has used thee badly.” Padre Alonzo patted her head. “I shall put thee on thy perch,” he went on; “though I trust good Anzar will not know it. But the moon is up, and my heart is tender. Alas! one does many things when the moon is up. And the next day--one does penance.”

He thrust the parrot into a fold of his cassock, made along to where was the perch, and placed her upon it. Then he stood back, folding his arms.

“To-morrow is Christmas Day, Loretta,” he said. “And what wilt thou give to Tony? What can the cactus give the golden poppy? Thou hast only love, eh? Well, that is much, though it grows from naught, as a China lily blooms from a bowl of rocks.”

He turned, and found himself before the Tree. Fir and pine massed their branches behind it, making a background of plushy green. Against that background, showing full, hung the torn and unclad shape. The moon glinted upon it, haloing the head of the Crucified.

The padre sank, bowing, and touched himself in the sign.

“_Aw, To-o-ny! To-o-ny!_” came a sleepy croak at his back. The parrot was settling herself for the night.

Padre Alonzo rose and turned, reaching up to stroke her. “Good-night, Loretta,” he said fondly. “There were none too lowly for His gift of love. It was spared to thee, a yawping fowl, a talker after the manner of the lazy Mexicans that bred thee.”

He turned back upon the path, sighing and raising his eyes once more. “But for high or low,” he said, musing aloud, “the fruit of that love is sacrifice.”

* * * * *

Out of the chapel came the sounds of the noon service--the level intoning of prayer, the rumble and swell of the padres’ voices. From her place before the great crucifix Loretta mocked it, only ceasing now and then to answer Tony’s warbles with little whistles of delight or to run her open bill up and down the bit of vertical pole dividing her perch. Yesterday’s bout in the kitchen, yesterday’s hunger and fear, the lonely night ramble along the path, the lack of her preening friend--all these were forgotten in to-day’s safety, sunlight, plenty, and companionship. And so she _gurried_ and _purred_, _a-a-awed_ and _ga-a-awked_, shrilled her “_Buenos días!_” across the garden, laughed uproariously, or droned the familiar mass.

In reach of her pacing, in touch of her very tail, was the gilded cage, with Tony darting upstairs and down, yet sparing time now and then for a sip or a seed or a saucy chirp.

But of a sudden the happy cries of both birds were changed to notes of alarm. The canary, its round eyes starting like two polished shots, fluttered high and low, beating its yellow wings against the wires; while Loretta squared her rudder, spread her pinions and squatted belligerently. For on the ground, advancing that way by soft steps, and with the gloating look of the hunter fixed upon the cage, came Tomasso, the cat.

Quickly the parrot rallied from her panic. As if she knew that her arch-enemy was not seeking her now, but the precious bit of fluff at her side, she began a series of terror-inspiring performances learned in the profane garrison town of her hatching; she gave tongue to dire words that had long since gone out of her repertory. Ruffled to twice her size, she strutted along her perch, shrieking angry orders to mount, flinging out “_Vuelta! vuelta! vuelta!_” in husky trooper tones, and whistling the bugle calls.

It failed to scare Tomasso. Within the cage, as it gently danced from its spring, was a tempting morsel, one that lured all the more through its effort to escape. The cat crept steadily forward, velvet foot following velvet foot, across the shifting dapple before the great crucifix, across the packed gravel of the garden path, to the near shade of a gold of Ophir. There, under the roses, he paused, amber eyes glowing, whetted claws slipping in and out expectantly, muscles rolling and flexing with the measurement of the leap.

Then, with the cunning of the wild mother, Loretta adopted new tactics, seeking to divert him. She wobbled upon her perch, giving vent to bursts of hysterical laughter; she got between him and the cage and railed at him.