Chapter 1

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.