AT CASTRO'S RANCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12240, 8 April 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

AT CASTRO'S RANCH.

The stage coach from San Diego to Fort Yuma stopped at Castro's ranch to change horses and permit such passengers as dared take the chances to eat of the Mexican's food or imbibe his vile liquors. It was simply a road house of the most wretched type, with dirt and squalor on every hand, and Castro had an evil reputation. It was whispered that he bought quartermaster stores stolen from the fort, harboured outlaws, and went into raids with them. He was a man of SJ, ■ misshapen in body, with the face of a wolf, and how he could have won the hand of the young- and fairlooking woman who called him husband no one could make out. Little was seen of her by guests, and Castro was. a man no one liked to question. To the east of the ranch was the road running down to the Arizona line, and now and then, when the road agents and cattlestealers became too bold, a patrol was sent out from the fort to cover 20 miles of it. ■ It was while in charge of this patrol that young Lieutenant Forbush first met Castro's wife. Castro was off on one of his raids, and the woman in charge of the place. Forbush was hardly more than a boy; he had just been assigned from West Point, and knew nothing of the country or the ways of its inhabitants. He made his headquarters at Castro's, and there were reasons why the young wile smiled on him and made him very welcome. Castro knew that he was suspected by the military authorities, and it was his plan to hoodwink them by a great show of servility and friendship. He smiled in the faces of the officers while he cursed them under his breath. He begged them to honour him with their presence, but would rather have stuck a knife into their backs. His wife was acting under orders when she smiled and flirted with the boy officer, and played love airs to him on her guitar, while old Sergeant Brix was growling and cursing outside. The sergeant had served for almost 20 years. He knew the dodges of the outlaws and the tricks of the half-breeds. He saw and heard enough to know that the woman with the big black eyes was working some sort of a game for the benefit of her husband, but it was not until a freighter had been robbed of his outfit and left for dead on the road which the patrol should have made safe that he summoned up courage to cross the gult existing between man and officer. When he did decide to talk he decided to talk plainly: — "Lieutenant Forbush, you may order me under arrest and court-martial me if you will," he began, "but I'm bound to tell you that female is wanting to make a fool of you. She's working under the orders of old Castro, and his game is to keep us from doing our duty while his band of cut throats are picking up plunder." "Sergeant, do you know what you are saying '!" sternly replied the officer. "I do, sir, and it may mean disgrace for me, but I've got to speak up. That woman is trying to bewitch you for a purpose. We are not carrying out our orders, and it is all owing to her devilment. If you'd been out here a couple of years you'd know what her smiles and music mean to an honest soldier. It will not be for me or any other man of this patrol to say a word at the fort, no matter what may happen, but I'm telling you as man to man that the senora will lead you to hell if you follow her." The young officer, with the military etiquette of West Point before him, was furious and his vanity as a man had also received a shock. Pie was engaged to a girl in the east, and would marry her as soon as he had won the bars of a first lieutenant, but it pleased and flattered him to think that a woman out there beyond civilisation had been caught by his face and figure. But if the words of the blunt old sergeant angered the officer, they also opened his eyes, and there was less dallying and more riding. The woman was quick to see that he had been warned, and she exerted all her influence as an offset. Indeed, she overdid it. Curious as it may seem, what she meant for a flirtation to blind his eyes turned out to be a case of love on her part. She really and truly feH in love with the young officer, and suggested an elopement. Ho attempted by coolness of demeanour and sensible arguments to bring the woman back to reason, but she was deaf to his words, and blind to all perils. There were those hanging about the ranch who sent word of the matter to old Castro, and when the messenger reached him he.swore to be avenged. The patrol had been detailed for a month. The officer alone occupied quarters, in the adobe ranch house, while the men had their tents outside and not far away. Three weeks passed. Castro's wife had flirted, fallen in love and been scorned. That is, young Forbush had rejected the idea of an elopement, and was no longer playing with fire, while Castro was on his way home to wreak revenge on his foolish if not faithless wife. Thus matters stood one evening when the woman sat down in her room with rage -and jealousy gnawing at her —rage because she had been scorned—jealousy because the officer had admitted that lie had. a sweetheart to whom he would be faithful.. She sat in the darkness for hours, brooding and planning; at last she arose, passed into another room, and took a box from a cur*-> board. In the box were four tarantulas, which had been caught and imprisoned to bo ; shipped away-— horrid, hairy spiders of the west whose bite means death. With the box under her arm she paused at the officer's door, and listened to hisdeep breathing for a time. Then she pushed' the door open, and entered the room, walking over the hard earth floor with her bare feet. The moonlight streamed in at the windows, and showed her man sleeping heavily on his couch. She crouched down beside him, and lifted the cover of the box. Then she softly took one of his hands, bent her face to the bed, and ho slept on and his sleep was dreamless. "If it is so I will kill her !" muttered old Castro as he at last drew near the ranche, and with native cunning he cautiously turned out his horse, and sneaked into the house without word or alarm. His wife was not in her own room. He sought her in two or three others, and then his eyes blazing with fury he opened the door of the officer's room, and made her out as she knelt beside the bed. Drawing his knife, chuckling in his throat with satisfaction, he began stealing across the room. He had covered two-thirds of the distance, and was reaching out his left hand to grasp the woman by the hair when he suddenly leaped back and uttered a shriek. It was followed by another and another, and he dashed among the tents of the soldiers to fall down and writhe and shiver and die. " Come on !" said the sergeant to his men as he lighted a torch, and advanced towards the house. They followed him through the open door and across the public room to that of the officer. The glare of the torch showed four tarantulas crawling about on the floor. It showed a deadywoman kneeling by the bedside. It showed a dead man lying on his back with his eyes half-open, and a look of terror on his face. " I told him she was a she-devil !" muttered the sergeant, "but he has found itout too late."