The Mystery of the Barranca

The Mystery of the Barranca by Herman Whitaker

The Mystery of the Barranca, by Herman Whitaker, follows two American mining engineers, Robert Seyd and his red-haired friend Billy Thornton, as they try to hold a copper claim in the Barranca de Guerrero in Mexico. At a small railway station Seyd saves a Siberian wolfhound from a train. Its owner is a young woman named Francesca, whose uncle is the stout old hacendado and general Don Luis García. Her cousin, Sebastien Rocha, watches Seyd with veiled hostility. The station agent, Peters, warns them that the Santa Gertrudis mine has been denounced eleven times and that every earlier claimant vanished, died or was driven out. Don Luis owns the land and has the government behind him. No muleteer will hire out to the Americans until Don Luis orders two of his own men to take them. At Don Luis's suggestion they take the old trail down the Barranca. On the way they pass hanged bandits and learn how Sebastien cleared the country of brigands. At night a landslide has carried away the trail, and the muleteers drive the pack animals at the two men. Seyd and Billy survive by lying down and striking matches. Sebastien then appears and flogs the muleteers. He turns out to speak fluent English from his schooling in Manchester, which he hates, and he denies planning the attempt. Boycotted by every peon, the partners spend weeks building a small smelter by hand. Seyd goes to pay his denunciation taxes and is attacked by charcoal-burners led by the hunchback Caliban. Francesca arrives and has them flogged. Seyd then meets her mother and hears Don Luis defend the peon system and condemn Yankee progress. Seyd is shot from ambush on the way home. Don Luis sends the two wounded culprits to the mine to be hanged, and the Americans put them to work instead. Francesca visits with medicines and food, and she and Seyd grow close. Sebastien and Don Luis plot, and Sebastien sends a pretty cook named Carmelita to the mine to compromise them. When Francesca sees her there, she turns cold. Seyd orders the girl out, and he and Billy fight over it. Afterward he confesses that three years earlier he made a hasty marriage to a shallow, selfish woman in New Mexico and has not seen her since. The finished smelter is blown up by dynamite hidden in the charcoal. Don Luis then astonishes them by lending fifty thousand pesos at five percent, so that no company of outsiders can take the mine. Seyd goes to the States to buy equipment. On his return in the rainy season he finds Francesca stranded in the storm with a fallen horse. They ride double and lose the trail. They shelter overnight in a vaquero's hut, where he sleeps respectfully and she watches over him. Sebastien meets Seyd the next morning. He admits he could have shot him but will keep the secret and shield her reputation. The floods cut off the valley. Seyd rows across the river to Billy and rescues an orphaned girl from a drifting tree. He brings her to San Nicolás, where Francesca takes her in and renames her Roberta. Seyd's visits there grow more frequent. A rotten ceiba falls and strikes him, Francesca believes him dead, and they kiss. He remembers his wife but cannot stop. Francesca's drunken mozo Tomas tells Sebastien's servant what he saw. Sebastien confronts Francesca and threatens Seyd's life unless she goes to Europe with his sick mother and promises not to write. She agrees, and Seyd learns she has gone. Nearly a year later the new smelter is still delayed by mysteriously misrouted freight. Peters tells Seyd that Don Luis has gone to protest a clay dam built upriver, and that Francesca is returning from Europe after Sebastien's mother died in France. Seyd takes the train to Mexico City to press the railroad's general manager, and the manager promises him his freight. Meanwhile Sebastien reads a marked article in Seyd's Albuquerque newspaper at the station and slips the paper under his coat.

By Herman Whitaker · First published 1913 · Genre: Adventure fiction, Mystery, Thriller and suspense · 28 chapters · 76,602 words

First lines

"Oh Bob, just look at them!"

Leaning down from his perch on the sacked mining tools which formed the apex of their baggage, Billy Thornton punched his companion in the back to call his attention to a scene which had spread a blaze of humor over his own rich crop of freckles.

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Mexico · Mexican hacienda life · Copper mining · Mining engineers · Barranca de Guerrero · American expatriates in Mexico · Anglo-Mexican tensions · Class conflict · Peonage · Hacendado power · Banditry · Hangings and vigilante justice

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The Mystery of the Barranca is listed on Textopian as a novel by Herman Whitaker, dated 1913 CE.

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