THE DESERT TRAIL [Illustration: "So she gave me her hand and away we went."] THE DESERT TRAIL BY DANE COOLIDGE AUTHOR OF BAT WING BOWLES ILLUSTRATIONS BY DOUGLAS DUER and P.J. MONAHAN [Illustration] NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY W.J. WATT & COMPANY THE DESERT TRAIL THE DESERT TRAIL I The slow-rolling winter's sun rose coldly, far to the south, riding up from behind the saw-toothed Sierras of Mexico to throw a silvery halo on Gadsden, the border city. A hundred miles of desert lay in its path--a waste of broken ridges, dry arroyos, and sandy plains--and then suddenly, as if by magic, the city rose gleaming in the sun. It was a big city, for the West, and swarming with traffic and men. Its broad main street, lined with brick buildings and throbbing with automobiles, ran from the railroad straight to the south until, at a line, it stopped short and was lost in the desert. That line which marked the sudden end of growth and progress was the border of the United States; the desert was Mexico. And the difference was not in the land, but in the government. As the morning air grew warm and the hoar frost dripped down from the roofs the idlers of the town crept forth, leaving chill lodgings and stale saloons for the street corners and the sun. Against the dead wall of a big store the Mexicans gathered in shivering groups, their blankets wrapped around their necks and their brown ankles bare to the wind. On another corner a bunch of cowboys stood clannishly aloof, eying the passing crowd for others of their kind. In this dun stream which flowed under the morning sun there were mining men, with high-laced boots and bulging pockets; graybeards, with the gossip of the town in their cheeks; hoboes, still wearing their Eastern caps and still rustling for a quarter to eat on; somber-eyed refugees and soldiers of fortune from Mexico--but idlers all, and each seeking his class and kind. If any women passed that way they walked fast, looking neither to the right nor to the left; for they, too, being so few, missed their class and kind. Gadsden had become a city of men, huge-limbed and powerful and with a questing look in their eyes; a city of adventurers gathered from the ends of the world. A common calamity had driven them from their mines and ranches and glutted the town with men; for the war was on in Mexico and from the farthermost corners of Sonora they still came, hot from some new scene of murder and pillage, to add their modicum to the general discontent. As the day wore on the crowd on the bank corner, where the refugees made their stand, changed its complexion, grew big, and stretched far up the street. Men stood in shifting groups, talking, arguing, gazing moodily at those who passed.