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Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

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Title: Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

Author: R. B. Townshend


        
Release date: March 5, 2013 [eBook #42268]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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LONE PINE

       *       *       *       *       *

New Fiction

SMITH BRUNT

United States Navy. By WALDRON K. POST, author of "Harvard Stories,"
etc. 12º, 459 pages, $1.50.

     "A rattling good story of the Old Navy.... The book recalls Harry
     Gringo by its breadth and interest of plot; which means it is a
     first-class sea story. It is not an imitation, however.... The
     prevailing thought of the book is the unity of aims, ideals and
     race between Englishmen and Americans, and this idea is brought out
     so well that, even though the reader enjoys the story of the fierce
     sea-fights, he deplores the shedding of blood by brothers'
     hands."--_Buffalo Courier._


BEARERS OF THE BURDEN

Being Stories of Land and Sea. By Major W. P. DRURY, Royal Marines. 12º,
286 pages, $1.00.

     "Major Drury's stories combine pathos and humor with an underlying
     earnestness that betrays a clear moral vision. The whole volume is
     of a rare and wholesome quality."--_Chicago Tribune._


ROSALBA

The Story of Her Development. By OLIVE PRATT RAYNER (Grant Allen),
author of "Flowers and Their Pedigrees," etc. Hudson Library, No. 39.
12º, 396 pages, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.00.

     "A story which holds the reader with profound interest to the
     closing lines."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._


ABOARD "THE AMERICAN DUCHESS"

By HEADON HILL. Hudson Library, No. 41. 12º, paper, 50 cts.; cloth,
$1.00.

     NOTE.--This is a reprint of a work previously published under the
     title of "Queen of the Night"--with certain changes of names.

     "He has certainly given to the reading public a capital story full
     of action. It is a bright novel and contains many admirable
     chapters. Life on the ocean is well depicted, many exciting
     episodes are well told, and it will interest readers of all
     classes."--_Knoxville Sentinel._


THE PRIEST'S MARRIAGE

By NORA VYNNE, author of "The Blind Artist's Picture," etc. Hudson
Library, No. 42. 12º, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.00.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON

       *       *       *       *       *


LONE PINE

The Story of a Lost Mine

by

R. B. TOWNSHEND







[Illustration: Decoration]

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York & London
The Knickerbocker Press
1900

Copyright, 1899
by G. P. Putnam's Sons

The Knickerbocker Press, New York




TO
MY FRIENDS IN SANTIAGO

RED AND WHITE

AND

IN MEMORY OF
A BRINDLED BULLDOG


I have to thank Señor F. de Arteaga y Pereira, Reader of Spanish in the
University of Oxford, for the Spanish version of Heine's poem which
appears in Chapter XXIX.


     A lone pine stands in the Northland
       On a bald and barren height.
     He sleeps, by the snows enfolded
       In a mantle of wintry white.
     He dreams of a lonely palm-tree,
       Afar in the morning-land,
     Consumed with unspoken longing
       In a waste of burning sand.
     _After Heine._




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                PAGE
     I.--INDIAN LOVERS                    1

    II.--A LONE HAND                     12

   III.--BLASTING THE ACEQUIA            22

    IV.--A RACE WITH A MULE              38

     V.--"OJOS AZULES NO MIRAN"          46

    VI.--AN OLD WOUND REOPENED           59

   VII.--DESDEMONA LISTENS               74

  VIII.--CHILDREN OF THE SUN             90

    IX.--A SQUAW FOR A FEE              105

     X.--AN ELOPEMENT                   119

    XI.--MY DUCATS AND MY DAUGHTER      131

   XII.--PACIFYING A GHOST              144

  XIII.--A GIRL'S TEARS                 163

   XIV--A STERN CHASE                   180

    XV.--THE ROD DESCENDS               188

   XVI.--THE FEE IS ACCEPTED            197

  XVII.--MADAM WHAILAHAY                214

 XVIII.--HUNTING A TRAIL                229

   XIX.--RUN TO GROUND                  244

    XX.--THE WOLF'S LAIR                258

   XXI.--DRIVING A BARGAIN              269

  XXII.--A WOUNDED MAN                  285

 XXIII.--A PICNIC PARTY                 297

  XXIV.--WEIGHING THE SILVER            308

   XXV.--A PREHISTORIC HEARTH           323

  XXVI.--THE SNAKE'S VERDICT            340

 XXVII.--AULD ACQUAINTANCE              353

XXVIII.--ELEVEN TO ONE                  366

  XXIX.--PEACE WITH HONOUR              384




LONE PINE




CHAPTER I

INDIAN LOVERS


A moon just past its first quarter was shining on the Indian pueblo of
Santiago, so that one side of the main street (it only boasted four) was
in deep shadow, while on the other the mud-built houses were made almost
beautiful by the silver light. The walls on the bright side were
curiously barred with the slanting shadows cast by low, broad ladders,
which led from storey to storey of the terrace-like buildings, and by
the projecting ends of the beams which supported their flat roofs.
Outside each house, clear away from the wall, stood a great clay oven,
in shape exactly like a gigantic beehive as tall as a man. In the
deepest shadow on the dark side of the street, between one of these
ovens and the wall, something was crouching. The street was deserted,
for the Indians, who practise the precept "early to bed and early to
rise," had long ago lain down to sleep on their sheepskins. But if
anyone had gone up to the crouching something, he would have found a
young Indian, with a striped blanket drawn completely over and around
him so as to conceal everything except the keen eyes that peered
watchfully out of the folds. There was no one to disturb him, however,
and the bright moon of New Mexican skies sank lower and lower in the
west, and yet he remained there motionless, except when now and again
the night air, growing colder, caused the blanket to be gathered more
closely to the body it was protecting.

Just as the moon dipped behind the western hills, the figure sprang up
and darted forward. The long, untiring watch was over at last. From a
hole in the opposite wall, a good deal higher than a man's head from the
ground, a little hand and wrist were seen waving.

In a moment the boy--he was hardly more--was underneath. He threw back
the blanket from his head, and it fell down to his waist, where it was
supported by a belt, leaving his body and arms free. His answering hand
crept up the cold, rough surface of the wall till at its utmost stretch
he felt a smooth, warm skin rub against his finger-tips, and instantly
the two hands interlocked.

"Is that you, Felipe?" breathed a low voice from inside.

"Yes, my love, it is," came back a whisper as low from the Indian boy
who had waited so long and so patiently for his sweetheart's signal.
"Why did you look so sad," he continued, "when you gave me the signal
to-day? Is there anything new?"

"Oh, Felipe, yes," she sighed. "I do not know how to tell you. My father
spoke to me this morning and said it should be in three days. He has
sent for the padre to come. In three days, Felipe! What shall I do? I
shall die!"

The young Indian groaned under his breath. "In three days!" he said.
"Ah, that is too cruel! Is it really true?"

"Oh yes," came the whispered answer. "My father said he would beat me to
death if I did not consent. I should not so much mind being beaten,
Felipe--it would be for you; but he would kill me, I believe. I am
frightened."

Felipe felt the shiver that ran through the finger-tips clasped in his.
"Do not be so afraid, Josefa," he said, trying to keep up her courage.
"Can you not tell the padre that you hate old Ignacio and that you will
not marry him?"

"Yes," replied she, "but he will say, 'Oh, nonsense, nonsense; girls are
always afraid like that.' As long as my father is cacique the padre is
bound to please him to make sure of getting his dues. He'll do what my
father wants. He will not mind me."

"There is only one thing for us to do," said the boy; "we must run away
together."

"But where?" said she, "and how? They will catch us, and they will beat
us, and they will marry me all the same to that ugly old Ignacio. I hate
him from the bottom of my heart; and if ever he dares to try to master
me, I'll do him a mischief."

"Ah, but he is going to bribe your father with three cows," said her
lover disconsolately. "He can do it, too, easy enough. He is the very
richest man of all the Eagles, and I suppose the Eagles are the
strongest family in the pueblo next to the Snakes. Anyway the cacique
always favours them, so he has a double reason for wanting to hand you
over to that old miser. Alas! I have no cows to give him, not even one
little calf. We Turquoises are so few and so poor! The cacique would
never hear of your marrying one of us. He is so proud of having married
a Snake himself, that he thinks nobody good enough for his daughter who
isn't able----" He was silenced by the girl.

"Hush!" said she quickly in a smothered tone, "I hear him moving about
in the farther room"; and the Indian lad listened, motionless as a
statue, with all the wary concentration of his race in the moment of
danger.

The red Indian has often been represented as apathetic. He is not. His
loves and his hatreds are intense, only, both by birth and bringing up,
he is endowed with extraordinary power of controlling their expression.
Underneath their outward self-restraint these simple folk of Santiago
were capable enough of feeling all the emotions of humanity pulsing
through their veins and plucking at their heart-strings. Felipe and
Josefa, exchanging hand-clasps and vows of fidelity through a hole in an
adobe wall, were as passionate and as miserable as if the little drama
which meant so much to them was being played on the wider stage of the
great world outside. When the girl whispered "hush" to her lover, both
held their breath and listened, each conscious of the pulse that
throbbed in the other's hand. It was a noise from inside the house that
had startled the girl. She could hear that someone in a farther room had
got up and was throwing a stick of wood on the fire. With a gentle
pressure her finger-tips were withdrawn from her lover's, and her hand
disappeared back through the hole. Felipe sank down into the crouching
position he had been in till she came, drawing the blanket over him for
concealment and warmth as before. For nearly half an hour he remained
perfectly still. Then a slight rubbing on the inner side of the wall
became audible, and presently looking up he saw not a hand only, but a
whole arm reaching down to him from the opening. Up he sprang, and
stretching himself on tiptoe against the wall he succeeded in bringing
his lips up to the little hand, which he kissed silently again and
again.

"It was my father," said she. "He must be asleep again now; he lay down
again quite soon. They put a new stone," she continued, "in the
hand-mill to-day, for I have quite worn out the old one with grinding
corn on it for my step-mother. But they have brought the old one into
the storeroom here, and I have taken it to stand on, so that I can see
you now if I take my hand in and put my head to the hole. But, Felipe,
let us settle what to do."

"I've been thinking," said Felipe, "we must run; we must. Of course it
is no use for us to go to our padre. He is on their side, just as you
say, so we will not go to him. We will try another padre, who has
nothing to do with the pueblo and won't care for your father. I'll tell
you. Let us go to Padre Trujillo at Ensenada. They say he is good and
kind to his Indians. He will marry us. I have the money to pay his fee.
When we are once married, my joy, we are safe. They cannot separate us
when the padre has joined us for ever. They cannot do anything to us
then; our own padre himself would forbid it."

"We would be safe then, indeed," sighed Josefa. "Oh, if we could only
manage it! What shall we do for a horse? the horse herd is away in the
sierra, and they will not bring it down till Sunday."

"Sunday will be too late for us," said Felipe sadly. "We want a horse
now, at once; I could go out to the horse herd and get my father's horse
if he would give me leave to get him. But you know this new captain of
the horse herd is that bullying Rufino of the Eagles. He and his
helpers have the herd now on the other side of the Cerro de las Viboras,
the Mountain of the Snakes. I'm sure they'd never let me have the horse
unless my father gave them the order or came to fetch him himself. But
he won't do that, I know; the horse is thin after the cold winter, and
he wants him to eat green grass now and grow fat. It won't do."

"Ask El Americano, then," suggested the girl quickly, as if a sudden
thought had struck her. "Yes, why don't you ask him? Ask Don Estevan to
lend you a horse or a mule; you work for him, and he seems so friendly
with you, perhaps he'll let you have one of his."

"What!" exclaimed the young Indian, "ask him! Ask Turquoise-eyes to lend
a horse! Ask Sooshiuamo to do that! That's no sort of use." He spoke
hopelessly, as if surprised at her even thinking of such a thing.

El Americano, as the girl had first called him, otherwise known as Don
Estevan or Sooshiuamo, was a solitary white man, a prospector who had
obtained permission to spend the past winter in the village of the
Indians of Santiago, and by them was often referred to as El Americano,
the American _par excellence_, because he was the only one within fifty
miles.

"You might just ask him once, though," she persisted, in spite of
Felipe's attitude. "Oh yes, Felipe, go and ask him. Do try. Go now. It
can't do any harm even if he won't."

"But I know he won't," returned the boy, unconvinced; "and I shall have
to tell him what it's for, and if I go and tell Sooshiuamo our secret,
what's to prevent him telling the chiefs? He's very friendly with them
all."

"Oh, but of course you mustn't tell him our plan," she answered; "we
must keep that dark. But he's very kind to all our folk. Perhaps he'd do
it for us out of kindness. It's all out of kindness, isn't it, that he's
going to make the rocks fly away out of the acequia to-morrow? They say
he's going to do a miracle for the pueblo. I heard my father talking
about it."

"Yes, I know that," said Felipe; "I know he told me himself he would
make the rocks jump out of the ditch, and that then we should have twice
as much water as ever we had before. I know he's a good friend to us.
But I know, too, he hates ever to lend any of his animals to any of us.
He thinks we would ride them to death if he did. I will try him, though,
anyway. I will beg very hard. Don't be afraid, dear heart; I will get
one somehow, if you will really come--yes, if I have to take one of the
Mexicans' horses."

"Oh no, not that!" cried she. "They will shoot you or hang you if you
touch their horses. Don't do it. I will not go if you take a horse of
the Mexicans. I would rather go afoot."

"No, dear heart, you couldn't. It isn't possible. It is ten leagues to
Ensenada from here, and we must do it between moonset and daylight, or
they will catch us. Do not talk of going afoot. Trust me, I will get a
horse. But you will really come, Josefa _mia_? Do you really mean it?
What other woman would be so brave?"

"I do mean it, indeed," she answered. "Oh, how I wish we could be
married here in our own church by the padre! but my father wouldn't hear
of it. He wouldn't even let me speak to you, you know, or let me go out
without being watched."

"Yes, I wish we could," said the young Indian wistfully. "I spoke to my
father to ask for you for me, but he only said, 'We are too poor. It is
no use. We have only one horse and two cows. Ignacio has several horses
and thirty cows.' As if that was a reason, when I want you so much!" he
added indignantly. "If I had the whole world I would give it to
Salvador, and he might be cacique of it all, if he would only let me
have you." He drew himself up to the wall again and kissed the little
warm hand eagerly. "My sweetheart!" he exclaimed, "I shall die if I do
not get you! Oh, if I could only tear down this hateful wall! How can I
talk to you properly when I cannot see you? May not I get in by the
terrace roof? Let me try."

"Hush, Felipe," she said. "Don't be foolish, you silly boy. You would be
sure to be heard, and then everything will be ruined. You must be
patient." Here she gave his hand a little squeeze, which of course had
just the contrary effect to her advice, for he kissed the fingers with
redoubled ardour. Then he broke in--

"But if I can't get in without disturbing them, how will you be able to
get out?"

"Oh, I can manage that," said the girl. "I will slip into this storeroom
when they are asleep, as I always do, and from here I can get through
the trap-door into the room above, and so out on to the terrace. There
is an old ladder I can get up by."

The villages of the Pueblo Indians are built in terraces, each
house-storey standing back from the one below it like a flight of
gigantic steps. From terrace to terrace people ascend by ladders, and
many of the lower rooms are without any door but a trap-door in the
ceiling. The system is a relic of the times when their villages were
castles for defence against their deadly enemies, the marauding Navajos
and Apaches.

"How brave you are, Josefita _mia_!" he cried. "Will you really dare to
run away from them, and come with me? How sweet it will be! we shall be
together for the first time--think of it! Oh, I will make you happy, I
will indeed!"

"If they rob me of you, I shall die," said the girl in a low, sad voice.
"One thing, Felipe, I promise you, I will not be Ignacio's wife. Never!
You need not fear that."

"Oh, my darling," he sighed, "how can I be content with that? I want you
for my very own. In my eyes you are more beautiful than the saints in
the church, and they are not more wise and good than you. Why are things
made so hard for us?"

"I do not know," she said softly; "nobody seems to be so unhappy as we
are. But we can comfort each other ever so much. My step-mother will
make me work like a slave all to-morrow, I know, but I shall have the
thought of you to comfort me."

"My sweetheart!" said he. "You have a thousand times more to bear than I
have. But I will try to think for you. You must take some rest. I know
how they treat you." He ground his teeth. "We must part now, but I will
come to-morrow night. I will bring a horse if I can get one. If not, we
have one day left still, and we will settle what to do."

"Till to-morrow night, then," said she.

"To-morrow night at moonset," said Felipe; and with many final pressures
of hands, each one intended to be the very last, the lovers parted.

Silently the moccasined feet of the boy stole up the wide street, as he
ran homeward under the clear starlight. He lifted the latch of his
mother's door and entered. The fire was low, and he put on another stick
of cedar wood, and lying down on the sheepskins spread upon the floor,
covered himself with his blanket and lay still. His father, old
Atanacio, woke up when he came in, but said nothing to him; and soon
sleep reigned again supreme in the Indian house. The Indians are early
risers as well as light sleepers, and before daylight they were up and
stirring. After their breakfast of bread and dried mutton, Atanacio
said, "When you have taken care of the horses of the Americano, Felipe,
you had better weed the wheat patch by the meadow. Tomas and I are going
to the patch up by the orchard."

"I wanted," said Felipe, somewhat timidly, "to go to the herd and get
the horse."

"Bad luck take the boy!" snarled the old Indian. "What does he want with
the horse? Does he think we keep a horse for him to wear him to a
skeleton flying round the country on him? Let him be. Let him get fat on
the green grass."

"But I shall want him if I go with Sooshiuamo," answered Felipe
diplomatically. "The Americano told me that he was going off to the
sierra for a hunt to get meat as soon as he had made the rocks jump out
of the acequia for us as he has promised. He said when he went on a hunt
he wanted me to go along and help him to pack the meat down. His rifle
never misses, and then when he kills a wild bull he will give me
meat--fresh meat--father."

"Bad luck take the Americano, too," growled the old man, as crossly as
ever. "Whose cattle are they that he wants to kill? The wild cattle in
the mountain are the children of ours, though they have no brands. Why
should he come and kill them?"

"The cacique gave him leave, father."

"Well, I suppose he says so," was the ungracious response. "But if he
wants to take you, he can give you a beast to ride. He has two mules
besides the mare, and they do nothing, and eat maize all the time. They
ought to be fat."

"But if he kills a bull he will want them to carry the meat," said
Felipe. "One mule can't carry it all."

"Very well, then, you can ride one of his up and walk back," snapped the
stern parent. "Want to ride the horse indeed! Lazy young rascal! Go
afoot."

Felipe felt rebellious. He was getting to be a man now, and his father
still wanted to treat him with as little consideration as a child.
Instead of showing increasing respect to his tall son, the old man grew
crosser and crosser every day. But Felipe had never rebelled against the
parental yoke, though he had said to himself a hundred times that he
would not stand it any longer. Yet in plotting to elope with Josefa he
was plotting a rebellion far more venturesome against the code of the
community of which he was a member.

"There isn't much hope there," said he to himself as he left the house,
"but I knew that before. Now for Don Estevan." It was no use to try to
borrow from any of the other Indians, for every man of them had his
horse out at the herd--except, indeed, the cacique himself--and the herd
was a day's journey away. With an anxious heart the boy wended his way
to the next street of the village, which was the one where the American
lodged.




CHAPTER II

A LONE HAND


The sun was just rising above the mesas, or flat-topped hills that
formed the eastern horizon of the view from the village, as Felipe
knocked at the door in the row of mud-built houses. His knock was
answered by a fierce growl from a dog, and a loud "Come in" in Spanish
from a vigorous human voice. He opened the door, which was unlocked, and
stepped cautiously inside. From the brown blankets of a bed that stood
by the wall a brindled bulldog was emerging, and apparently proposed to
drive the intruder out.

"Dry up, Faro, will you?" said the same voice in English, addressing the
dog. "Can't you see it's only Felipe?"

The dog, who evidently had a general theory that all Indians would bear
watching, lay down again sulkily on the bed, and Felipe advanced to the
fireplace. The owner of the voice was seated on a low stool, bending
over the coals, with his back to the door.

"Good-morning, Don Estevan; how are you?" said Felipe in Spanish. The
Santiago people spoke an Indian dialect of their own amongst themselves,
but they used Spanish as a medium of communication with the rest of the
world.

Stephens, for that was the American's name, which in its Spanish form
had become Don Estevan, was busy cooking, and he answered without
looking round, "Good-morning, Felipe; how goes it?" A critic might have
said that his Spanish accent was by no means perfect, but no more was
the Indian's, and the pair were able to understand one another readily
enough, which was the main point.

How had this American come to be living here by himself in a remote
village community of the Pueblo Indians? During ten long years of search
for gold he had wandered from Colorado to California, from California to
Nevada, from Nevada to Montana, and from Montana back again to Colorado.
The silver boom in Colorado had just begun, and then silver mines were
all the talk there. Thereupon Stephens recollected a story he had heard
from an old prospector with whom he had once been camped in Nevada about
a deserted silver mine in New Mexico which had once been worked by the
Spaniards, with the forced labour of their Indian slaves, and had since
lain idle, untouched, and even unknown. When the Spanish power was
broken, and the Spaniards driven out, the Indians had covered up the
place and sworn never to disclose its existence. According to the story,
the sole possessors of the secret were the Pueblo Indians of Santiago.

To Santiago accordingly Stephens had made his way in the hope of solving
the mystery of the secret mine. This hope, however, was one which he
could not avow openly at the first meeting, and when he presented
himself before the chiefs of the pueblo it was of gold and not of silver
that he spoke. He told them of his past toils and adventures, and the
red men seemed to take a fancy to him on the spot. Hitherto these
Indians had persistently enforced their right to prevent any man not of
their own blood from taking up his abode within a league of their
village of Santiago, a right secured to them by special grant from the
kings of Old Spain. What was there about this man that melted their
obduracy? Some charm they must have found in the face of this lone
wanderer, for him alone among white men had they admitted as a permanent
guest to the hospitality of their most jealously guarded sanctuary.

Perhaps there was something of pure caprice in their choice; perhaps it
was in a way due to the effect of physical contrast. For in this case
the contrast between the white man and the red, always marked, was as
striking as it could possibly be. He was as fair as they were dark. With
his white skin, his grey-blue eyes, and his curling golden hair, worn
long in frontier fashion, he was as fair as any Norseman that ever
boasted his descent from the ancient Vikings.

"Gold," said Tostado, one of the chiefs, as Stephens sat in the midst of
them on the occasion of his first visit; "we ask you what sort of a life
you live, and you answer us that you live only to search for gold. Why,
here is the gold. You carry it with you"; and with a reverent grace the
fine old chief laid his dark fingers gently on the long yellow locks
that flowed down from under the prospector's wide sombrero.

The grey-blue eyes of the far-wandered man--one who like Ulysses of old
had withstood the buffets of capricious Fortune through many adventurous
years--found an expression of genuine friendliness in the dark orbs of
this redskin chief, who smiled gravely at his own jest, as if in
half-excuse of its familiarity. Tostado gazed into the white man's eyes
a moment longer, and then turned to the circle of his fellow-chiefs.

"See," he said, "the white man's eyes are the same colour as our
precious turquoise stones; they are the colour of our sacred jewel, the
Shiuamo, that I wear as the head man of the Turquoise family," and he
pointed to his breast where a large polished turquoise hung from a
circlet round his neck. "The white man has travelled far; he is weary;
he shall stay with us and rest a while; and we will give him an Indian
name, and he shall be as one of ourselves. Let him be called
'Sooshiuamo,' 'Turquoise-eyes.' My brothers, say, is it good?"

"Yes, it is good," they answered, "it is good. From henceforth
Sooshiuamo is one of us; he is our brother."

And in this fashion the roving gold-seeker had obtained amongst them the
acceptance he desired.

Felipe, with his striped blanket gracefully draped round him, came and
stood just behind his employer, but said nothing. On a rough table were
a tin cup and tin plate and an iron-handled knife; a small coffee-pot
was bubbling in the ashes on the hearth. Stephens held a frying-pan in
his left hand, and beside him on a tent-cloth on the floor lay a large
smooth boulder and a hammer, with which he had been pounding his tough
dried meat before cooking it. He now stood up to his full height, and
turning his face, flushed with the fire, to Felipe, pointed with the
steel fork held in his right hand to a great wooden chest against the
wall at one side of the room. "Go and take an almud of corn and give it
to the stock," said he. "Give Morgana her extra allowance."

"Yes, señor," said Felipe; and taking down three nosebags which hung on
a peg in the wall, he filled them, and went out to the corral in the
outskirts of the village where the American kept his beasts. The mare
Morgana was a beautiful bay, of pure Morgan stock, and the mules were
sturdy little pack animals of Mexican breed. By the time they had eaten
their corn, and the boy had returned to the house with the nosebags, his
employer had finished his meal and was washing up the dishes. Felipe
hung up the nosebags, and stood by the fire silent and thoughtful; it
never occurred to him to offer to help in what he looked upon as women's
work. Stephens took the wiping cloth and began to wipe up. Felipe at
last screwed up his courage to ask far the mare he needed so badly.

"Oh, Don Estevan!" he began suddenly.

"Well, what is it?" said Stephens sharply, rubbing away at his tin
plate. It always irritated him to see anyone else idle when he was busy.
Felipe's heart sank. He felt he should fail if he asked now. Perhaps his
master would be in a better humour later on.

"What shall I do with the beasts?" he said in his ordinary voice.

"Was that all you were going to say?" said Stephens, looking at him
keenly. "What's the matter with you? What's up?"

"Nothing, Don Estevan--it's nothing," said Felipe. "Shall I put them
into the meadow as usual?"

"Yes, certainly," replied Stephens. "I sha'n't ride. I shall walk up the
acequia to the rock I am going to blast. If I want them after, I'll come
down."

"Very well, señor," said the boy; and taking the lariats he went back to
the corral, caught the stock, and led them down the Indian road, through
the unfenced fields of springing crops, towards the river.

At the lower end of the plough-lands a steep bank of bare earth and
clay dropped sharply to the green flat fifteen or twenty feet below,
through which the river ran. The plough-lands lay on a sort of natural
terrace, and were all watered by numerous channels and runlets, which
had their sources in the great _acequia madre_, or main ditch. This
ditch was taken out of the river some miles above, where it was dammed
for the purpose, and was led along the side of the valley as high up as
possible; the pueblo was built beside the ditch more than a league below
the dam, nearly half a mile from the river in a direct line. The grassy
flat through which the river flowed remained unploughed, because it was
liable to be overflowed in flood time. It was a verdant meadow, the
common pasture-ground of the milch cows of the village, which were
herded here during the day by small boys and at night were shut up in
the corrals to keep them out of the unfenced crops. Felipe hobbled the
three animals in the meadow, and set to work weeding in the wheat land
above, where he could keep an eye upon them.

Some time after Felipe's departure, Stephens went to his powder-keg and
measured out three charges of blasting-powder.

"Curious, isn't it?" said he aloud to himself as he handled the coarse
black grains in which so much potential energy lay hid,--"curious how
these Indians, hard-working folk as ever I saw, have lived two or three
hundred years here under the Spanish Government, and been allowed by
those old Dons to go on, year after year, short of water for irrigating,
every time."

He closed up his powder-keg again securely, and locked it away in the
room that he used as a storeroom; it was the inner of the two rooms
that he rented in the block of dwellings inhabited by the Turquoise
family. Here he lived, alone and independent, simply paying Felipe a
trifle to do his chores and go up to the mesas and get his fire-wood.
Indoors the prospector distinctly preferred to keep himself free and
unbeholden to anybody; he continued to live exactly as he did in camp,
doing his own cooking and mending, and doing them thoroughly well too,
with a pioneer's pride in being sufficient to himself in all things.

"And now," said he, as he wrapped up the charges of powder, "I'll just
show my good friends of Santiago here a little trick those old Spanish
drones were too thick-headed or too lazy ever to work. This fossilised
Territory of New Mexico don't rightly know what's the matter with her.
She's got the best climate and some of the best land in America, and all
she's good for at present is to bask in the sun. If she only knew it,
she's waiting for a few live American men to come along and wake her
up."

Stephens had been so much alone in the mountains that he had got into
the solitary man's trick of talking to himself. Even among the Indians
he would sometimes comment aloud upon things in English, which they did
not understand; for in spite of their companionship he lived in a world
of his own.

He took down a coil of fuse from a shelf, cut off a piece, rolled it up,
and stowed it away along with the charges of blasting-powder in his
pockets, first feeling carefully for stray matches inside. "Yes," he
continued, as his fingers pried into every angle of each pocket
preparatory to filling it with explosive matter, "drones is the only
name for Spaniards when it comes to talking real work. They don't work,
and they never did. They've made this Territory into a Sleepy Hollow.
What she wants is a few genuine Western men, full of vim, vinegar, and
vitriol, just to make things hum for a change. New Mexico has got the
biggest kind of a future before her when the right sort of men come
along and turn to at developing her."

He stood in the middle of his outer room, patting himself gently in
various parts to make sure that he had got all his needful belongings
stowed away. "Now then, Faro," and he addressed the dog, who was still
curled upon the bed eyeing his master doubtfully, uncertain whether he
was to be left at home on guard or taken out for a spree; "what this
here benighted country needs is the right kind of men and the right kind
of dogs. Aint that the sort of way you'd put it if you were a human?
Come along then, and you and me'll take a little trot up along the ditch
and astonish their weak minds for 'em."

With yelps of joy, uttered in a bulldog's strangled whistle, Faro
bounded off the bed on to the earthen floor, and danced rapturously
round his master, who was still thoughtfully feeling his pockets from
the outside to make certain that when he reached his destination he
would not find that some quite indispensable requisite had been left
behind. Then he bounced out of the open door into the street, scattered
a pig and three scraggy chickens that were vainly hunting around after
stray grains of corn where the horses had been fed, and then halted to
await his master out by the corrals. Stephens, having at last assured
himself that he had really forgotten nothing, came out after the dog,
pulling to the door behind him, and the pair started off to walk up
alongside the acequia. There was no water in it to-day, as it had been
cut off up above to facilitate the work of blasting. Here and there in
the fields Indians were at work: some wielded their great heavy hoes,
with which they hacked away at the ground with astonishing vigour;
others were ploughing with pairs of oxen, which walked stiffly side by
side, their heads lashed firmly by the thick horns to the yoke, as they
dragged the curious old-fashioned wooden ploughs, just like those
described by Virgil in the _Georgics_ two thousand years ago. In the
peach orchards near the village women were at work, and little naked
brown children stopped their play to stare at the white man as he
passed, with the simplicity of Arcadia. After half an hour's walk he
reached his destination, a rocky promontory that jutted out from the
hills into the valley. The acequia ran round its base, and the Indians,
in order to bring as much of the valley as possible under irrigation,
had carried the line of the ditch as high as they could. They had
carried it so high that where it rounded the rocks a point projected
into it, and made it too narrow and too shallow to carry the amount of
water that it was easily capable of containing both above and below.
They had no saws to cut boards to make a flume for the ditch; and,
besides, such a piece of engineering was quite beyond the range of their
simple arts. This weak place had been a hindrance and a trial to them
from time immemorial. If they attempted to run their ditch more than
half full of water it brimmed over at this point, and then broke down
the bank. It had to be patched every year,--sometimes several times in
one year,--and this entailed much extra work on the members of the
village community, who were all bound by their laws to work on the ditch
when necessary, without pay. In fact, the repair of the ditch at the
point of rocks was one of the stock grievances of the pueblo, everyone
thinking that he was set to do more than his share of the work. Besides,
it naturally broke down when fullest, that is to say, when they needed
it most for irrigation, and everyone wanted water for his maize or his
wheat crop. No wonder, then, they were first incredulous and then
overjoyed when by a fortunate chance Stephens happened to hear of their
difficulty and went to examine the spot, saw at once that it was a
simple matter, and offered to lend them tools, to show them how to drill
the necessary holes, and then to blast away the obnoxious rocks for
them. These Indians were familiar with firearms and knew the force of
gunpowder, but were ignorant of its use for blasting purposes; nor were
their Mexican neighbours in this part of the country much more
enlightened. Accordingly they had accepted with joy Stephens's proffered
assistance, having learned by experience to set a high value on the
skill and resource of their American friend.




CHAPTER III

BLASTING THE ACEQUIA


A little crowd of these peaceful and industrious red men, in character
so unlike their wild cousins of the prairie and the sierra, were grouped
around the point of rocks. As Stephens approached them he heard the
click, click, of steel on stone; and as he came near the crowd made way
for him, and the cacique saluted him: "Good morning, Sooshiuamo; you
have come at the right time. See how well the young men have worked at
making the holes in the rock as you showed them yesterday. They have
made them quite deep now. Come and tell us if they are right."

Stephens looked into the ditch, where a powerfully built Indian was
laboriously jumping a heavy bar of steel up and down in a hole bored in
the hard, solid rock, giving it a half-turn with his wrists at each
jump. The Colorado miner got down into the ditch and took the drill he
had lent them out of the hands of the Indian, and tried the hole with
it. His deft and easy way of handling the heavy jumping-bar showed
practised skill as well as strength. "That'll do right enough," he said,
looking up at the cacique who stood on the bank above him. "You have got
your chaps to do the business well. Are the other two holes as deep as
this?"

"Yes, deeper," answered the Indian. "See, here they are; try them; the
young men have been at them since noon yesterday."

Stephens moved along to the points indicated and examined in a critical
manner the work that had been effected. "Yes, that looks as if it would
do all right," he said in approving tones. "Now then, you fellows, give
me room, and keep still a few minutes, and I'll show you some
fireworks."

He produced from his pockets the powder and fuse, and proceeded to make
his, to them, mysterious preparations, the eager and inquisitive circle
of red men pressing as near as possible, and almost climbing over each
other's shoulders in order to get a good view. Their excited comments
amused Stephens greatly, and in return he kept up a running fire of
jests upon them.

But it is not always easy to jest appropriately with men who stand on a
different step of the intellectual ladder from yourself; and without his
dreaming of such a thing, one of his laughing repartees suggested to his
Indian auditors a train of thought that their minds took very seriously.

Stephens's action in ramming down a charge of powder, and then tamping
it, had not unnaturally reminded them of an operation which was the only
one connected with gunpowder that they had experience of. "Why, he's
loading it just like a gun," cried a voice from the crowd; "but what's
he going to shoot?"

"Shoot?" retorted Stephens, without looking up, as he adjusted the fuse
with his fingers; "why, I'm going to shoot the sky, of course. Don't you
see how this hole points right straight up to heaven? You sit on the
mouth of it when I touch her off, and it'll boost you aloft away up
over the old sun there"; and raising his face he pointed to the brightly
glowing orb which was already high overhead.

At his words a sort of shiver ran around the ring of red men. Religion
is the strongest and the deepest sentiment of the Indian mind, and the
rash phrase sounded as if some violation of the sanctity of what they
worshipped was intended. What! Shoot against the sacred sky! Shoot with
sacrilegious gunpowder against the home of The Shiuana, of "Those
Above"? The deed might be taken as a defiance of those Dread Powers, and
bring down their wrath upon them all.

Then came a crisis.

"Bad medicine! witchcraft!" exclaimed a voice with the unmistakable ring
of angry terror in it. To the Indian, witchcraft is the one unpardonable
sin, only to be atoned for by a death of lingering torture.

A murmur of swift-rising wrath followed the accusing voice. The American
was warned in a moment that he had made a dangerous slip, and he at once
tried to get out of it with as little fuss as might be.

"You dry up!" he retorted indignantly. "Witchcraft be blowed! You ought
to know better than to talk like that, you folks. I'm telling you truth
now. That was only a little joke of mine, about shooting the sky.
There's no bad medicine in that. We Americans don't know anything about
such fool tricks as witchcraft. Here's all there is to it. I'm simply
going to blast this rock for you. It's just an ordinary thing that's
done thousands of times every day in the mines all over the United
States."

"Ah, but there are great wizards among the Americans, and their medicine
is very bad," cried the same voice of angry terror that had spoken
before. "Are you working their works? are you one of them?"

Stephens glanced quickly round the ring of dark eyes now fixed on him
with alien looks. He saw there a universal scowl that sent a chill
through him.

"There's a lot of explosive stuff round here besides my
blasting-powder," he said to himself, "and it looks as if I'd come
mighty nigh touching it off, without meaning it, with that feeble little
joke. What a flare-up about nothing!"

There flashed across his mind on the instant a story of three stranger
Indians, who by some unlucky chance had violated the mysteries of the
Santiago folk and had never been heard of more.

For himself he had every reason, so far, to be satisfied with his
treatment, but now, at last, he had happened to touch on a sensitive
spot with the Indians, and behold, this was the result. He saw that he
must take a firm stand, and take it at once. He straightened himself up
from his stooping position, dusting off the earth that adhered to his
hands.

"Now, look here, you chaps," he said peremptorily, as he stood erect in
the middle of the ditch, "you want to quit that rot about witches right
here and now. There's only one question I'm going to ask you, and that's
this--do you want your ditch fixed up, or don't you? You say it has been
a trouble to you for hundreds of years, and here I stand ready to fix it
for you right now in just one minute. There's only one more thing to be
done, and that's to strike the match. Come, Cacique, you're the boss
around here. Say which it is to be. Is it 'yes' or 'no'?"

Salvador, the cacique of Santiago, was no fool. Personally he was as
firm a believer in witchcraft as any of his people, nor would he have
hesitated for a moment to utilise such a charge as had just been made to
rid himself of an enemy. But he was also well aware that there were
times when it was far more expedient to suppress it, and that this was
one of them.

"Nonsense, Miguel!" he exclaimed, turning abruptly on the Indian who had
first raised the dreaded cry; "this Americano is a good man, and no
wizard, and your business is to hold your tongue till you are asked to
speak. It is the proper office of your betters to see to these matters,
and you have no right nor call to interfere."

The lonely American heard him speak thus with an intense sense of
relief. The power of the chief was great, and his words were strong to
exorcise the malignant spirit of fanaticism.

"Good for you, Salvador!" he exclaimed, as the cacique's reproof ceased,
and left a visible effect on the attitude of the crowd, "that's the
talk! I'm glad to see you've got some sense. Your answer is 'yes,' I
take it."

"Assuredly I mean 'yes,' Sooshiuamo," answered the cacique; "we want you
to go on and finish your work. I say so, and what I say I mean. But if
all is ready, as you declare, before you strike the match we will offer
a prayer to Those Above that all may be well."

"Why certainly, Cacique," assented Stephens, "I've got no sort of
objection to make. You fire ahead." He breathed more freely now, but he
was conscious of a vastly quickened interest in the religious methods of
the Indians as he watched the cacique withdraw a little space from the
edge of the ditch and turn, facing the east, the other Indians following
his example, and standing in irregular open formation behind him, all
facing towards the east likewise.

"Didn't reckon I was going to drop in for a prayer-meeting," said the
American, with a humour which he kept to himself, "or I might have
brought my Sunday-go-to-meeting togs if I'd only known. But, by George!
when I was mining over on the Pacific slope, the days when things was
booming over there, if we'd had to stop and have prayers on the Comstock
lode every time we were going to let off a blast, I should rather say
that the output of bullion in Nevada would have fallen off some."

He listened intently to the flow of words that the cacique, acting as
the spokesman of his people, was pouring forth, but they were utterly
unintelligible to him, for the prayer was couched in the language of the
tribe, and not in civilised Spanish. All he could distinguish were the
"Ho-a's" that came in at intervals from the crowd like responses.

"I wonder what he's saying, and who or what he's saying it to?" he
meditated questioningly. "What was it that Nepomuceno Sanchez was
telling me only last week,--that they didn't have service in that old
Roman Catholic church of theirs more than once in a blue moon, and all
the rest of the time they go in for some heathen games of their own in
their secret estufas in the pueblo; he swore that one time he dropped on
to a party of them at some very queer games indeed, on the site of an
old ruined pueblo of theirs 'way off up on the Potrero de las
Vacas--swore they had a pair of big stone panthers up there, carved out
of the living rock, that they go and offer sacrifices to. I didn't more
than half believe him then, but this makes me think there's something in
it. What the blazes are they at now?" A chorus of "Ho-a's," uttered
with a deep, heartfelt intonation, like the long a-a-mens at a revival
meeting, rose from the crowd. There rose also from them little tufts of
feather-down that floated upwards to the sky, soaring as it were on the
breath of the worshippers, outward and visible symbols of the petitions
that ascended from the congregation. The cacique took a step in advance,
holding in his hands two long feathers crossed; he stooped down and
began to bury them in the loose, light soil. Stephens, his curiosity now
intensely aroused, was moving forward a little in order to see more
closely what was taking place, but an Indian instantly motioned him back
in silence, finger on lip, with a countenance of shocked gravity, making
the irreverent inquirer feel like an impudent small boy caught in the
act of disturbing a church service.

"Perhaps at this stage of the performances they'd like to have me take
off my hat," he soliloquised. "Well, mebbe I will." He looked round at
the motionless figures reverently standing with bowed heads. "Do at Rome
as Rome does, so some folks say. These Indians themselves don't have any
hats to take off, but they look so blamed serious over it that I'm dead
sure they would if they wore 'em. Dashed if I don't do it; here goes!"
and he swept his broad sombrero from his head, subduing his face to a
decorously grave expression.

But the repressed humour of the American reasserted itself beneath this
enforced solemnity of his exterior. "Makes me think of the story of the
man the Indians in California once took prisoner, only instead of
putting him to the torture they painted him pea-green and worshipped him
as a deity. It's not so bad as that yet," he went on to himself, "but I
don't much like taking any sort of part in this show, nohow." He looked
at the hat which he was devoutly holding in his hand as he stood amongst
the congregation, and his face assumed a quizzical expression. "I wonder
now if by doing this I aint, by chance, worshipping some blamed idol or
other. I used to be a joined member oncet, back there in Ohio, of the
United Presbyterian Church. I wonder what poor old Elder Edkins would
say now if he caught sight of me in this shivaree. However, I guess I
can stand it, if it don't go too far. So long as they stick to this
tomfoolery and only worship those turkey feathers, or whatever they are,
that the cacique's been burying, I'll lay low. But if they want to play
me for an idol, and start in to painting me pea-green, there'll be a
rumpus. What a time their prayer-meeting does take, anyhow! Ah, thank
goodness, here's the doxology."

The cacique had finished his incantation over the crossed feathers, and
interred them properly. He now rose and dismissed the assembly, which
instantly broke up, the serious expression rapidly dissolving from all
faces, as it does from those of a congregation pouring out of church.

It was on the tip of Stephens's tongue to begin, "Why, Cacique, you've
forgot to take up the collection. Where's your plate?" as he saw
Salvador approaching him, but a sobering recollection of the awkward way
in which his last joke had missed fire checked the temptation to be
flippant as too dangerous.

"My game," thought he, "is to cut the gab and come to the 'osses, as the
English circus-manager said; or else they might call on Brother Miguel
to give an exhortation, and who knows which end of the horn I should be
liable to come out at then?"

"Well, Cacique," he said aloud, "through? so soon? You don't say! Are
you really ready now?"

"Yes," answered the Indian, "now you begin. Do your work."

"All right then," rejoined the American; "if that's so, by the
permission of the chairman I'll take the floor." He sprang down into the
ditch, drew out a match, and turned round to the cacique. "Now,
Salvador," he called out, "make your people stand clear. Let them go
right away."

They did not need telling twice, and there was a general stampede, the
bolder hiding close by, the most part running off to the distance of a
rifle-shot. The cacique gathered up the buckskin riata of his plump
mustang, which stood there champing the Spanish ring-bit till his jaws
dropped flakes of foam, and retired to a safe distance. Stephens stood
alone in the ditch and struck the match. It went out; he took off his
broad felt hat, struck another match, and held it inside. This time the
flame caught, and he applied it to the ends of the fuses, and retreated
in a leisurely manner round the back of a big rock near by. He found two
or three of the boldest Indians behind it, and pushing them back stood
leaning against the rock. They squeezed up against him, their bright
black eyes gleaming and their red fingers trembling with excitement.
They had never seen a blast let off before.

Boom! boom! went the first two charges, and the echoes of the reports
resounded through the foothills that bordered the valley. Several
Indians started forward from their hiding-places.

"Keep back there, will you!" shouted Stephens. "Keep 'em back,
Salvador. Tito," he said familiarly to the Indian who was next him
beside the rock, "if you go squeezing me like that I'll pull your
pigtail." Tito's long black hair was done up and rolled with yellow
braid into a neat pigtail at the nape of his neck. The Pueblo Indian men
all wear their hair this way, and are as proud of their queues as so
many Chinamen.

Tito laughed and showed his gleaming teeth, as he nudged the boy next to
him at the American's joke. Boom! went the third charge. The practical
miner looked up warily to see that no fragments were flying overhead,
and then stepping from under cover waved his arm. At the signal the
Indians poured from their hiding-places and rushed eagerly down to the
scene of action.

The blast was a great success. Some tons of stone had been shattered and
dislodged just where it was necessary, and it was plain to see that the
ditch might now be made twice as big as before. Without any delay the
Indians swarmed in like ants, and began picking up the broken stone with
their hands, and carrying it out to build up and strengthen the lower
side of the embankment.

While the workers were thus busily engaged, the cacique came forward,
holding his horse by the riata of plaited buckskin. He made a deep,
formal reverence before the man who had wrought what for them was
nothing less than a miracle,--the man by whose superior art the solid
rock had been dissipated into a shower of fragments, and who now stood
quietly looking on at the scene of his triumph.

"It is truly most wonderful, this thing that you have done," began the
chief, "and we will be your devoted servants for ever after this"; and
he bowed himself again more deeply than before, as deeply as when he
had buried the sacred feathers a few minutes earlier.

The native humour of the American asserted itself at once. "Here's the
pea-green deity business on," he murmured to himself. "So far, so good;
I don't mind the deity part, but I draw the line if he trots out his
paint-pot; then I'll begin to kick."

"Since the days of Montezuma," continued the cacique, with an eloquent
wave of his hand, "no benefactor like you has ever come to the red men;
no blessing has been wrought for them such as you have done. Would that
our departed ancestors had been allowed to see with their own eyes the
great, the glorious manifestation of power that has been shown to us,
their children--" and his mellifluous oratory rolled on in an unceasing
stream of praise.

"By George!" said Stephens to himself, "I wonder if right now isn't my
best time to bounce him about the silver mine. I did calculate to bring
it up before the council of chiefs when I saw a favourable opportunity,
but though the rest of 'em aren't here at this moment the cacique's
talking so almighty grateful that perhaps I'd better strike while the
iron's hot." He listened a moment to the profuse expressions of
gratitude that poured from the red man's lips. "If he only means a
quarter of what he's saying, I ought to have no difficulty in getting
him to back me up. But perhaps I'd best tackle him alone first, and make
sure of his support." He waited until the cacique had finished his
peroration.

"Glad you're pleased, I'm sure," said Stephens in reply, "and here's my
hand on it," and he shook the cacique's hand warmly in his. "Just let's
step this way a little," he went on quietly. "I've got a word or two to
say to you between ourselves," and the pair moved away side by side to a
distance of a few yards from the site of the blasted rock.

"You see, working together like this, how easily we've been able to
manage it," began the American diplomatically. "I'm an expert at mining,
and your young men have carried out the execution of this job admirably.
Now, look at here, Cacique; what I wanted to say to you was this. Why
shouldn't we go in together, sort of partners like, and work your silver
mine together in the same sort of way? I could make big money for both
of us; there'd be plenty for me and plenty for you and for all your
people, if it's only half as good as I've heard tell"; he paused,
looking sideways at the Indian as he spoke to note what effect his
suggestion produced on him. At the words "silver mine" the chief's face,
which had been smiling and gracious in sympathy with the feelings he had
been expressing in his speech, suddenly clouded over and hardened into a
rigid impassibility.

"I don't know what you mean by our silver mine, Don Estevan," he
answered frigidly. "There is no such thing in existence."

"Tut, tut," said Stephens, good-humouredly, "don't you go to make any
mystery of the thing with me, Cacique. I'm your good friend, as you
acknowledged yourself only a minute ago. I mean that old silver mine
you've got up there on Rattlesnake Mountain, Cerro de las Viboras as you
call it. You keep it carefully covered up, with logs and earth piled up
over the mouth of it. Quite right of you, too. No use to go and let
everybody see what you've got. I quite agree to that. But you needn't
make any bones about it with me who am your friend, and well posted
about the whole thing to boot."

In reality Stephens was retailing to the Indian the story of the mine as
far as he had been able to trace it among the Mexicans. This was the
first time that he had even hinted to any of the Santiago people that he
knew anything at all about it, or had any curiosity on the subject.
Salvador maintained his attitude of impassibility.

"I don't know who has told you all this," he answered, "but it is all
nonsense. Put it out of your mind; there's nothing in it."

But in spite of these denials Stephens believed his shot about the mine
had gone home, and he knew also that the cacique was reputed to be fond
of gain.

"Oh, I understand you well enough, Salvador," he rejoined with easy
familiarity. "Of course you're bound to deny it. It's the old policy of
your tribe. That's all right. But now, as between you and me, it's time
there was a new departure, and you and I are the men to make it. I tell
you I know just what I'm talking about, and there's money in it for both
of us." He thought he saw the dark eyes of the Indian glisten, but his
lips showed small sign of yielding.

"It's no use, Don Estevan," the latter said firmly. "I cannot tell you a
word now, and I don't suppose I ever shall be able to. Keep silence. Let
no one know you have spoken to me about such things."

At this moment loud cries broke out from where the workers were busy,
and Stephens, wondering what was up, listened intently to the sounds. He
thought he could distinguish one word, "Kaeahvala," repeated again and
again. The cacique turned round abruptly. A huge rattlesnake, which had
been disturbed by the shock of the blast, had emerged from a crevice in
the rocks, and showed itself plainly to view wriggling away over the
open ground.

"After him, after him, Snakes!" called out the cacique in a loud voice.
"He is angry because his house has been shaken. To the estufa without
delay! You must pacify him."

On the instant there darted forth in pursuit half a dozen young men of
the Snake family, and at the same moment Faro, with an eager yelp,
announced his ardent intention of pacifying the snake in his own
fashion, and away went the dog, who had been compelled to endure, much
against his will, the tedium of the Indian prayer-meeting and the
oratory of the cacique, and now proceeded to grow frantic with
excitement at the chance of joining independently in the chase.

"Come back there, Faro," cried Stephens, in an agony of alarm for his
favourite; "come back there, will you!" But Faro was headstrong and
pretended not to hear.

The cacique too was filled with alarm, but the object of his solicitude
was not the dog but the reptile. "Quick, quick!" he cried to the young
men; "be quick and save him from that hound."

And then Stephens saw a sight that astonished him out of measure. The
Indian youths had the advantage of Faro in starting nearer the snake;
they ran like the wind, and the foremost of them, overtaking the reptile
before Faro could get up, pounced upon him and swung him aloft in the
air, grasping him firmly just behind the head and allowing the writhing
coils to twine around his muscular arm. One of his companions produced a
bunch of feathers and stroked the venomous head from which the forked
tongue was darting, while the baffled Faro danced around, leaping high
in his efforts to get at his prey. Stephens ran up and secured his dog,
and looked on at this extraordinary piece of snake-charming with an
amazement that increased every moment.

"But why don't you kill the brute?" he cried. "Don't play with him like
that; kill him quick. Tell 'em to kill him, Cacique. I never passed a
rattler in my life without killing it if I could; it's a point of
conscience with me."

The Indian looked at him with grave disapproval, as a parent might look
at a child who had in its ignorance been guilty of a serious fault.

"You do not understand, Sooshiuamo," he said in a tone in which reproof
was mingled with pity; "the snake is their grandfather, and they have to
show their piety towards him." Then turning from the scoffer, "Hasten,"
he called to the young men; "run with him to the proper place"; and away
they sped across the plain towards the pueblo, the writhing reptile
still borne high in the air, and the bunch of feathers still playing
around its angry jaws.

"Well, I'm jiggered!" said Stephens. "I never saw such a thing as that
in my life. I say, Cacique, what is it that you want to do with the
brute, anyhow? Do you mean to tell me that you make a deity of him?"

The cacique's face assumed the same rapt and solemn expression it had
worn during what Stephens had irreverently called the prayer-meeting.

"These are our mysteries, Sooshiuamo," he said with a voice of awe; "it
is not for you to inquire into them. Be warned, for it is dangerous."

"Oh, blow your mysteries!" said Stephens in English, under his breath.
"Very well, Salvador," he went on aloud. "I'm sure I don't want to go
poking my nose into other people's business. I think I'll just say
good-morning. I've blasted that rock for you all right. Now you see if
you can make that ditch work; if you can't, you come and tell me, and
I'll see what more I can do to fix it for you. So long"; and without
more ado he turned on his heel and walked off down to the river.




CHAPTER IV

A RACE WITH A MULE


When Stephens arrived at the edge of the terrace on which the
plough-lands lay, he looked down on the green expanse of meadow through
which the river ran, and feeding in it half a mile below he saw some
stock that he knew must be his. "There they are," said he to himself. "I
reckon I'll take Jinks and go down to San Remo and get my mail, and see
if those Winchester cartridges that I sent for from Santa Fé came last
night."

He clambered down the abrupt bank of red clay to the meadow, and
followed down the line of the stream till he came to where his stock
were eagerly cropping the fresh green grass.

"Now how am I going to catch him?" said he to himself. "Let's see where
Felipe and the lariats are"; and looking round, he presently perceived
some clothes on the river bank, and going to them found Felipe, stripped
to his waist-cloth, splashing about in the middle of a deep pool.

"Hullo, Felipe!" cried he playfully. "Trying to drown yourself there?
You must go to the Rio Grande for that--there isn't water enough in the
Santiago River."

Felipe heard him indistinctly, and came towards him, swimming in Indian
style with an amazingly vigorous overhand stroke. Stephens picked up one
of the lariats that were lying loose on the ground by the clothes, and
swinging the noose round his head, jestingly tried to lasso the lad.
Missing him, he turned it off with, "I don't want you yet. I want the
big mule; I'm going to catch him and go down to San Remo"; and suiting
the action to the word, he coiled the lariat as he spoke, and turned and
started for the beasts.

Felipe came out and stood on the bank to watch him. "What a good humour
he's in now," thought the boy. "I suppose he was lucky with the rock.
Now is my time to ask him for the mare."

Stephens, holding the coil of rope behind him to conceal his intention
from the mule he desired to catch, cautiously approached him. Jinks, the
mule, however, was not to be deceived for a moment, and as his master
came near, turned his heels to him and scuttled off. Horses and mules
where they have frequently to wear hobbles become surprisingly active in
them. They bound along for a short distance, in an up-and-down
rocking-horse gallop, so fast that even a man on horseback has to make
his mount put his best foot forward to get up to them. Stephens found
himself outpaced, and gave it up, seeing that it was impossible for him
to capture the truant single-handed.

Felipe flew to his side in a moment. "Let me try to catch him,
Sooshiuamo," cried he, eagerly. "Let me!" and taking the lariat from the
not unwilling hands of the American, he started off, coiling it rapidly
as he ran. Before bathing he had undone his pigtail, and his long,
glossy black hair hung in thick, wavy masses down to his waist. Among
the Indians, the women cut their hair short--if it remained uncut the
care of it would take too long, and would keep them from their
household duties; but the men, having more leisure, allow theirs to
grow, and are very proud of its luxuriance and beauty. As Felipe ran,
his streaming locks floated out behind him on the air like the mane of a
wild horse, and gave to his figure a wonderfully picturesque effect; his
wet skin shone in the sun the colour of red bronze.

The Pueblo Indians are fine runners; they have inherited fleetness of
foot and endurance from their forefathers, and keep up the standard by
games and races among themselves. Felipe, young though he was, had no
superior in swiftness in the village. He darted like a young stag across
the meadow after the fugitive mule, and chased him at full speed down to
the river brink, and over the dry shingle banks of its very bed. The
pebbles rattled and flew back in showers from the hoof-prints of the
mule. Round they wheeled, back into the meadow again; and here the
Indian, putting on an astonishing burst of speed, fairly ran the
quadruped down, lassoed him, and brought him to his master.

"Here he is, señor," said he modestly, handing Stephens the rope.

"Well done, Felipe," said Stephens. "You did that well. You do run like
an antelope." He felt quite a glow of admiration for the athletic youth
who stood panting before him, resting his hand on the mule's back.

"Now's my time," thought Felipe, "what luck!--oh, Don Estevan," he
began, and then stopped with downcast eyes.

"Well, what is it?" said Stephens kindly.

"Oh, Don Estevan, if you would lend me your mare!" The murder was out,
and Felipe looked up at his employer beseechingly. "I would take such
care of her!" he continued; "I would indeed."

"Lend her for what?" said Stephens, a little taken aback. "What do you
want with her?"

"I want her to go to Ensenada to-night," said the boy.

"Oh, but Felipe, I'm going to the sierra to-morrow to hunt, you know. It
isn't possible. But," he continued, touched a little by the boy's
evident distress, "what do you want to do there? Why don't you get your
father's horse?"

"He's at the herd. My father doesn't let me," said Felipe despondently.
Then he went on, "I thought perhaps you didn't go for a day or two. I
will bring her back to-morrow in the night. And she shall not be
tired--not a bit. Oh, do lend her to me! Please do!"

"I wonder what foolery he's up to now," said Stephens to himself; "I do
hate to lend a horse anyhow--and to a harebrained Indian boy who'll just
ride all the fat off her in no time. Cheek, I call it, of him to ask
it."

"But," he continued in a not unfriendly tone, "why do you want her? Is
it flour you have to fetch?" Wheat flour was rather scarce this spring
in the pueblo, and some of the Indians were buying it over on the Rio
Grande.

"No, sir, it's not that. Only I want her," he added. "Oh please, Don
Estevan, please," said he with an imploring face; "do lend the mare or
the mule, or anything to ride. Oh do!" and he threw all the entreaty he
was capable of into his voice, till it trembled and almost broke into a
sob.

"Why, what ails the boy?" said Stephens, surprised at his emotion. "If
you want it so bad," he continued, "why don't you ask it from Tostado,
or Miguel, or some of them? They'll let you have one. You know I never
lend mine. If I did once, all the pueblo would be borrowing them every
day. You know it yourself. You've always told me yourself that it would
be like that." He was trying to harden his heart by going over his stock
argument against lending. "You see I can't do it. I'm going off to the
sierra to-morrow," and he turned away, leading the mule after him by the
rope.

But before he had gone far he stopped and looked round as if an idea had
struck him. "It might be a good notion to try and pump this boy a bit
right now," he considered; "he's so desperate eager to borrow the mare
he might be willing to let out a thing or two to please me." He beckoned
with his hand to Felipe, who was gazing regretfully after his employer.

"See here, Felipe," said Stephens, as the boy eagerly ran to him;
"there's something that I had in my mind to ask you, only I forgot. It's
just simply this--did you ever kill a rattlesnake?"

"Never, oh, never in my life!" cried the young Indian, with a voice of
horror.

"Well, and why not?" persisted the other. "What's your reason anyway?
What is there to prevent you?"

"Oh, but, Sooshiuamo, why should I?" said the boy in an embarrassed
manner, looking distractedly at the ground as he balanced himself
uneasily on one bare foot, crossing the other over it, and twiddling his
toes together. "I don't know," he added after a pause. "Why should I
kill them?"

"Well, they're ugly, venomous things," said the American, "and that
would be reason enough for anybody, I should think. But tell me another
thing then. What do your folks do with them in the estufa? Can't you
tell me that much?"

"What are you saying about things in the estufa?" cried the boy
excitedly. "Have any of the Mexicans been telling you, then, that we
keep a sacred snake in the pueblo? Don't you ever believe it, don't,
don't!" and his voice rose to a passionate shrillness that betrayed the
anxiety aroused in him by any intrusion on the mysteries of his people.

"The Mexicans be blowed!" said Stephens. "I'm talking to you now of what
I've just been seeing with my own eyes. There was a big old rattler came
out of the rock after I blasted it, and young Antonio went and caught it
by the neck and let it twist itself around his arm, and another fellow
went to playing with it with a bunch of feathers, and then they ran off
with it to the pueblo,--the cacique told them to,--and half a dozen more
chaps with them, as tight as they could go. Now I want to know what all
that amounts to."

"I can tell you this much," said Felipe after a moment's hesitation;
"Antonio is one of the Snakes; so were the others, of course, who went
with him. The snake is their grandfather, and so they know all about
snakes. But I'm a Turquoise, like you, Sooshiuamo. You are my uncle," he
added insinuatingly, "and you should be kind to me and lend me a horse
sometimes."

The American laughed aloud. "Oh, I know all about Grandfather Snake and
Grandfather Turquoise and the rest of them," he said. "But I'm not an
Indian, and I don't come into your family tree, even if you do call me
Sooshiuamo and I live in a Turquoise house. I don't lay claim to be any
particular sort of uncle to you. But I do want you should tell me
something more about this snake-charming business. Can't you let it
out?"

"But how can I let it out?" exclaimed Felipe in an irritated voice.
"Haven't I told you already that the Snakes know all about it, and not
me? You may be sure the Snakes keep their own affairs private, and don't
show them to outsiders. How should I know anything about the Snakes'
business?"

"Well, Felipe, if you won't, you won't, I suppose," said Stephens. "I
know you can be an obstinate young pig when you choose." He did not more
than half believe in the lad's professed ignorance. He hesitated a
moment as if in doubt whether to try another tack. "Look here, young
'un," he began again in a friendlier tone, "I'll pass that. We'll play
it you don't know anything about snakes. You're a full-blooded Turquoise
boy, you are, and your business is to know all about turquoises, and
turquoise mines, and so on. Very well." He was pleased to see a sort of
conscious smile come over the lad's mouth almost involuntarily. "All
right then. Let's play it that you are my nephew if you like. Now then,
fire ahead, you, and tell your uncle all about where we go to get our
turquoises from. You're bound to be posted up in these family matters.
There's a lot of things your uncle wants to hear. The silver plates for
the horse bridles, for instance, now; let's hear where they come from.
Go on; tell me about our silver mines."

"No, no, no!" he cried desperately, and he sprang back as if the
American had struck him with a whip. "It is impossible; there aren't
any; there are no such things; the Mexicans have been telling you that,
too, have they? but they're all liars, yes, liars; don't you ever
believe one word that they say about us." He paused, his lips parted
with excitement and his lithe frame passionately convulsed.

Regretfully Stephens looked at him and recognised that it was hopeless
to get anything out of him, at least in his present condition. "Very
well, Felipe," he said, "I think I understand your game. You just don't
choose, and that's about the size of it"; and gathering up the coils of
the lariat he turned abruptly away and led off the reluctant Captain
Jinks in the direction of the pueblo in order to saddle him up. He felt
decidedly cheap; as yet he had not scored a single trick in the game he
was trying to play.

Felipe stood looking after him disconsolately; at last he gave a heavy
sigh and walked back to where he had left his clothes, with drooping
head and flagging step, a figure how unlike the elastic form that had
burst full speed across the meadow five minutes before. "It's no use,"
said he to himself. "He doesn't care; he's a very hard man, is Don
Estevan." He did up his glossy hair into its queue, put on his long
buckskin leggings and his cotton shirt, worn outside in Indian fashion
like a tunic and secured with a leather belt, bound his red handkerchief
as a turban round his head--the universal pueblo head-dress--and with a
very heavy heart went back to his weeding.




CHAPTER V

"OJOS AZULES NO MIRAN"


"_Ojos azules no miran_--Blue eyes don't see," said a soft voice to
Stephens in gently rallying tones. He was sitting on Captain Jinks in
the roadway, nearly opposite to the first house in San Remo, with his
eyes shaded under his arched hands, and gazing fixedly back across the
long levels of the Indian lands over which he had just ridden.

"_Si, miran_,--Yes, they do see," he answered coolly, without either
looking at the speaker or removing his hands from his forehead, as he
still continued his searching gaze. He was trying to make out whether
the animals he had left in Felipe's charge were kept by him still
grazing safely in the meadow, or if they had been allowed to wander off
into the young wheat. The distance to where he had left them feeding was
nearer two miles than one, but nature had gifted him with singularly
keen vision, and the frontiersman's habit of being perpetually on the
lookout had developed this power to the utmost. He was able to identify
positively his own stock amongst the other animals at pasture, and to
assure himself that, so far, they were all right.

He took his hands from his forehead, straightened himself in his saddle,
and looked down at the person who had ventured to speak in so
disrespectful a way of the quality of his eyesight. The speaker was a
young Mexican woman, and he encountered the glance of a pair of eyes as
soft as velvet and as black as night, set in a face of rich olive tint.
At that pleasant sight his firm features relaxed into a smile, and he
took up her bantering challenge.

"_Si, miran_," he repeated,--"Yes, they do see, señorita; they see a
very pretty girl"; and with a ceremonious sweep of his arm he took off
his broad sombrero, as the conventional way of emphasising the
conventional gallantry.

The girl blushed with pleasure at the American's compliment. She had a
dark scarf drawn over her head, and she now tossed the end of it
coquettishly across her face, and kept up her bantering tone.

"Then," replied she, "as you had them directed straight towards the
Indian pueblo, I suppose it was a pretty little Indian squaw they were
gazing back at so earnestly."

"No," he returned bluntly, matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon that he was; "I
was looking back towards Santiago in order to make out whether my horses
had got into the Indians' wheat. But they're all right. And how is your
father, Don Nepomuceno?" he added civilly.

"He is very well, señor; he is now at home. Won't you come in and see
him? He said he hoped you would be coming down this morning, as it was
mail day."

"I am much obliged to him," answered Stephens. "I am on my way now to
the stage station, and I will look in as I return."

San Remo was the place where the weekly mail from Santa Fé to Fort
Wingate crossed the Santiago River. It was a village of the Mexicans,
and lay just outside the boundary of the four square leagues of the
Indian grant.

"That is where we two were going," she answered, "my little sister and
myself," and she laid her hand on a little brown maiden of ten years or
so, who had come out of the house and now stood shyly behind the elder
sister, holding on to her dress. "We have to buy some sugar," she
continued, "and there is a new storekeeper at the stage station, and
they say he sells cheap."

"Then with your permission, señorita, I'll walk along there with you,"
said the American. He suited the action to the word, throwing his right
leg lightly over the neck of his mule and then dropping both feet
together to the ground so as to alight facing the girl.

"Say, Chiquita," and he addressed the younger girl, "don't you want a
ride? Let me put you up"; but the child only smiled, showing her ivory
teeth and clinging more closely behind her sister.

"Don't be a silly, Altagracia," cried the latter, bringing her round to
the front. "Why don't you say 'thank you' to the American señor for his
kindness in giving you a ride on his mule?" and she pushed her, in spite
of her affected reluctance, into the hands of Stephens, who raised her
from the ground and placed her, sitting sideways, in the wide California
saddle, and gave her the reins to hold. Then, resting his right hand on
the mule's neck, he walked forward towards the store beside the elder
girl.

"I heard a new man had moved in and taken charge of the stage station
and post-office this week," he said. "Has he got a good stock?--many
pretty things for the señoras?"

"They say he has beautiful things,--velvet dresses and splendid shawls,"
she replied; "but I haven't seen them yet. I've only been in with my
aunt to buy things for the house, not to see his dress goods. But I hope
my father will take us there soon, before all the best of them are gone.
The wife of Ramon Garcia got a lovely pink muslin there. She showed it
to me yesterday in her house. He's a very clever man, too, is the new
storekeeper; he is a Texan, but he speaks Spanish beautifully, just like
ourselves. He has a Mexican wife."

"Ah," remarked Stephens, "has he? What's his name, do you know?"

"Bah-koose," answered the girl, giving full value to the broad Spanish
vowels which she imported into the somewhat commonplace name of
"Backus." "Don Tomas Bah-koose is his name," she repeated. "He is not
old, he appears to be about thirty, and he has three children. But
perhaps you have met him; is he a friend of yours?"

"Backus," said Stephens reflectively; "Thomas Backus. No, I can't say
that he is; I don't remember ever meeting anyone of that name."

"It sounds almost like our Spanish name, Baca," said she; "but he is not
one of the Bacas, though he has been living at Peña Blanca, where so
many of them live." The Bacas of New Mexico are a fine old family,
sprung from the loins of Cabeza de Vaca, the comrade of Ponce de Leon,
one of the heroes of the Spanish conquest.

"Well," said Stephens, "we'll soon see what he looks like, anyhow, for
here we are at the store." He lifted the child down from the saddle,
and the two girls at once went inside while he tied up his mule to a
hitching-post that was set in front of the door.

After he had finished doing so, he followed them in; and stepping across
the threshold he was instantly aware of a surprised glance of
half-recognition darted at him by a man who stood behind the counter,
where he was showing some cotton prints to three shawl-clad Mexican
women. "Mornin', mister," said the storekeeper, in English. "Excuse me
if I keep you waitin' a minute while I 'tend on these ladies."

"All right," answered Stephens briefly, and he leaned quietly back
against the mud-plastered adobe wall till the other should be at
leisure. He ran his eye over the shelves, which, like those of most
Mexican country village shops, contained a varied assortment that ranged
from tenpenny nails to the tin saints whose shrines decorate even the
poorest hovel in New Mexico. His gaze reverted to the storekeeper, who
was a tall, dark, spare man, with a clean-shaven face, a bilious
complexion, and snaky black hair. This, then, was Mr. Thomas Backus, an
American citizen married to a Mexican wife. She had certainly helped him
to a fluent command of her mother tongue, and Stephens could not help
envying the easy way in which he poured out lavish praises of his new
goods to the customers whom he was serving. The purchases of these
ladies were presently completed, but they still remained in the store
carrying on an animated conversation with Don Nepomuceno's daughter, who
had joined them in discussing the patterns they had chosen.

"And now what can I do for you?" inquired the storekeeper, looking
Stephens in the face as he turned to him.

"Surely I have met this man before, but where?" said Stephens to
himself, while he answered Mr. Backus's question by remarking politely,
"Oh, I'm not in any hurry, thank you. Won't you serve this young lady
first?" and with a slight gesture he indicated Manuelita, who was still
absorbed in the muslins of her friends. Rack his memory as he would, he
could not recall the occasion when he and Backus had met previously, yet
he felt almost certain it had occurred.

"Why certainly, certainly," returned the storekeeper cheerily; "so long
as you don't mind waitin' a few minutes," and he turned to the girl.
"Then what may I have the pleasure of being allowed to show you,
señorita?"

"Two peloncillos, Don Tomas, if you will be so kind," answered the young
lady; and two conical loaves of the brown Mexican sugar so popular in
the Territory were accordingly wrapped in paper and handed over to her;
but it was manifest that the pretty frocks were what were nearest to her
heart, and she and her three friends still continued to discuss the
subject with all the ardour of connoisseurs.

Meantime Stephens became more and more convinced in his own mind not
only that this was not his first encounter with Backus, but that the
latter was also engaged in watching him as closely as possible. He
chose, however, not to call attention to this by any inquiry when at
length the storekeeper announced himself ready to wait upon him,
contenting himself with simply explaining the object of his visit to the
store.

"I just wanted to see," he said quietly, "if you happened to have a
parcel here for me by the stage to-day from Santa Fé. Stephens is my
name, John Stephens. It's a parcel from Spiegelberg's," he added
explanatorily, "that I'm looking for; a small, heavy parcel; it's
Winchester cartridges."

"Oh yes, they're here; the stage driver left 'em for you all right,"
said Mr. Backus promptly, reaching down for them under the counter and
handing them over. "And I think there's some mail matter too for you;
I'll just see"; with which remark he disappeared into the little
post-office that was boarded off at one end of the store, returning from
there presently with some papers in his hand. "I reckon this letter's
for you"; he read out the address with the laboured enunciation of a man
of limited education. "To Mr. John Stephens, living among the Pueblo
Indians, Santiago, N.M."

"Yes, that'll be for me," said Stephens, putting out his hand for it.

"I reckoned as how you must be the man as soon as I seed you come in,"
answered Backus, handing over the letter along with a newspaper and a
postal packet, "'cos by what I hear thar' aint no other American living
in this valley."

"Just so," assented the prospector; "I'm the only one there is anywhere
around here. I've been playing a lone hand down in these parts all
winter. For six months I haven't spoken to an American except the
stage-driver."

It was a relief to him to talk English to anyone again after so long an
interval, although he was not exactly prepossessed by Mr. Backus's
looks, nor by the only thing he knew for certain about him, namely, that
he had gone and married a Mexican wife, a decidedly eccentric thing for
an American to do, in Stephens's eyes. But the mere sound of his native
language again was music in his ears, even though it were spoken by a
man as illiterate as the storekeeper. For, compared to the other,
Backus was illiterate. And it was a thing worth noting about Stephens,
who had had the advantage of a high-school education, that though he now
freely made use of the rude, vigorous colloquialism of the West,--so
much so, indeed, that he talked to himself in it,--yet he could drop it
in a moment on occasion. Before a stranger for whom he felt an
instinctive distaste, he at once became formal, and his language took on
a precision and his tone a punctiliousness that were foreign to his more
familiar discourse. As he would have said of himself, "If I don't cotton
to a man at once, I always feel like putting on a lot of frills."

"You bin long in these parts?" inquired Mr. Backus carelessly.

"About a year now in New Mexico," replied Stephens; "but I've been in
this Western country a good deal longer than that. I'm not a tenderfoot,
exactly, if I may say so; I didn't come to this country for my health."

Many men whose lungs are affected have hoped to shake off their dread
malady by breathing the pure, thin, dry air of Colorado and New Mexico.
The hardy Western pioneer pities the consumptive patient; he succours
him freely in distress; and, above all things, he hates to be mistaken
for one himself. Stephens was determined that his fellow-countryman
should be under no misapprehension on this point.

"No," laughed Mr. Backus lightly, "nor you don't look much like one of
them pore health-seekers neither. Say, though," he continued, more
warily, "you'll excuse my axin', but was you never in New Mexico before
this last year?"

"No," replied Stephens--"that is--yes, I should have said," correcting
himself, "I was once, but only for a short time, and that was some years
ago, and not in this part of the Territory." He shifted his position
against the adobe wall a little, and laid down on the counter in a
casual sort of way the parcel and the mail matter which he was holding,
as if to indicate that he was ready for a long chat. In reality he was
setting his hands free in case he might possibly need to use them. To be
at all closely questioned about one's past life by an absolute stranger
acts on the experienced Western man as a danger signal. He noted the
intense glow in Backus's eyes, and as he did so he grew conscious of a
strange sense of doubleness in his own brain, as if all this scene had
been enacted once before, and he ought to know what was coming next. He
shifted his waist-belt and left his thumbs resting lightly on the buckle
in front; it was a perfectly natural thing to do, and yet it left his
right hand within six inches of the trusty Colt's revolver at his hip.
Assuredly Stephens was no tenderfoot; he was watching every motion of
Backus out of the corner of his eye.

"Say, stranger," began the latter, leaning forward over the counter, and
speaking low and clear, "no offence, but I want to ax you a certain
question. It's a little sudden-like, but I have a reason for it; allers
no offence, you understand?"

"You can ask me any question you have a mind to, Mr. Backus," said
Stephens coolly. "Of course, whether I answer it or not is my choice."

Mr. Backus might be his fellow-countryman, but he must learn not to be
presuming. Almost unconsciously to himself his tone hardened. Stephens
could stand the easy familiarity of races that were not his own, and
treat the Indians of Santiago with a friendliness that was all the more
kindly for his own underlying sense of superiority, but for an American
to treat him lightly was another matter. The pride and reserve that had
grown up in solitude revolted at this man's inquisitiveness.

"Wal' then, stranger," continued Backus, with an apologetic manner that
was due to the other's change of voice, "allers, as I said before,
meanin' no offence, did you ever happen to kill a man?"

Manuelita, though apparently absorbed in a rose-sprigged muslin, caught
a note in the Texan's tone that aroused her vigilance. She knew no
English, but her quick brain divined that when he asked, "Did you ever
kill a man?" he was putting no common question.

Stephens started at the abrupt query, and his face flushed. He paused a
moment, looking hard at the other; then he slowly answered, "I don't
_know_ that I have ever killed anyone."

"Meanin', I take it," rejoined the other, "that you don't know for
certain, neither, that you haven't. I ax yer pardon again, stranger, but
as sure as God made little apples I've got a reason for what I'm saying.
That ar' time you was in New Mexico years ago that you spoke of just
now, was you, by any chance, at the battle of Apache Cañon?"

The words "Apache Cañon" sent a thrill through Manuelita; she knew well
that there had been a bloody fight there.

"Yes," answered Stephens, a strange new light beginning to dawn upon
him; "I fought at Apache Cañon, if you must know."

"You was on the Northern side, warn't you?" queried the storekeeper
again.

"Yes," said the prospector quietly; "I was a volunteer in the Second
Colorado Regiment."

"By gum, then, I knowed it!" cried the Texan excitedly; "you was one of
the Pet Lambs."

At the beginning of the Civil War the Colorado troops, a pretty tough
lot, were sometimes sportively alluded to as the "Pet Lambs."

A dry smile came to Stephens's lips at the sound of the old name. "I was
a Lamb," said he.

"And I was one of Baylor's Babes," returned the other.

"Baylor's Babes" was the nickname bestowed upon a force of Texas rangers
who invaded New Mexico, and had the audacity to propose to conquer the
whole Rocky Mountain country for Jefferson Davis off their own bats.

"Yes, you bet I was a Babe," he repeated, "and a whale of a Babe at
that, and hurrahed for Jeff Davis as long as I could stand. But that's
all over and done with now, and we've buried the war hatchet. But say,
stranger, do you happen to recollect what kind of a wepping you was
carrying at Apache Cañon? There warn't no Winchesters in them days," he
added, patting the parcel of cartridges that lay on the counter.

"I was armed with a muzzle-loading Springfield U.S. rifle, altered in
Denver to fire with a tape cap," replied Stephens. His nerves grew
tense, and he braced himself for a possible struggle to the death, for
he thought the Texan was about to spring on him; but he only asked with
quaint earnestness:

"Du tell; what's a tape cap, mister?"

"Why, did you never see one?" said Stephens. "But of course they're out
of date now. It was a dodge for capping a gun automatically. There was
a tape fitted with caps that was fed forward on top of the tube in
front of the hammer. It worked like a charm. You bet there was no time
lost fumbling around in your pouch for a cap with your fingers if you
had one of them fixed on your gun."

"Great Scot!" cried Backus, "then now I know how't was."

He raised his hands so suddenly to the neck of his shirt that he made
Stephens think he was reaching for the bowie-knife which some fighting
men carry in a sheath under the coat at the back of the neck. Manuelita
thought the same thing, and drew her breath hard, feeling her heart leap
with terror. Instinctively Stephens's fingers found the butt of his
revolver, but he felt paralysed at the thought of the defenceless women
by the counter. If there was to be a fuss, how could they make their
escape before it began?

But Mr. Backus was not preparing to start a fuss, and he was not feeling
for a weapon. He tore open the front of his shirt excitedly and bared
his breast, and showed a livid bluish mark close beside the collarbone.

"Strange!" he cried, "'t was you as give me that; 't was that darned
tape cap of yourn as done me. Now, don't you remember?"

"By thunder, I do!" exclaimed Stephens. "You were the man I shot that
day at close quarters. I recall your face now. I thought I'd seen you
before."

"I knowed you the minute you set foot inside this door," answered the
Texan, drawing himself up, and eyeing Stephens keenly. "You see, you
give me a good argyment for remembering you that day. Shake, partner,"
he added quickly, thrusting out his bony right hand across the counter.
"Bygones is bygones. As I said just now, we've buried the war hatchet
for good, and _I_ don't bear _you_ no ill-will."

Was this a move to get him off his guard? Stephens felt more than half
doubtful, but he decided to chance it, especially as he had a stout
sheath-knife handy at his left hip. He loosed his fingers from the ready
revolver butt, and the two strong hands met in a vigorous clasp.




CHAPTER VI

AN OLD WOUND REOPENED


If it was a strange coincidence that had thus suddenly brought these two
old foes together, face to face, in this remote quarter of New Mexico,
it was a coincidence no less strange that they were both there for the
same object. For Mr. Backus, too, was after the lost silver mine. Ever
since his marriage with the daughter of a Mexican peasant he had made a
tolerably easy living in a small way by keeping a country store, and in
the knowledge which he thus gained of the common pursuits and dominant
ideas among the Mexicans, what fascinated him particularly were the
tales of hidden mines and buried treasures so often to be heard amongst
them. Of all these tales, the legend of the secret mine of the Indians
of Santiago had excited his interest most, so that when he learned that
the San Remo stage station in their immediate neighbourhood was vacant,
and afforded an opening for a store such as his, he speedily arranged to
take charge of it and to transfer himself, his family, and his goods to
the spot. He had as yet no definite plan of operations beyond keeping
his ears open for every scrap of information that might come into his
way from any quarter, and doing all he knew to ingratiate himself with
the Indians themselves; but the very first step he had proposed to take
was to find out about this white man who was said to be living among
them, and to discover what his objects were and how much he knew.
Fortune had favoured him so far, and here he was shaking hands with the
man himself, who had thus unexpectedly proved to be no other than his
ancient enemy.

At the moment when the pair were thus exchanging signs of amity, the
doorway was darkened by the form of a tall, swarthy, well-dressed
Mexican. Mr. Backus hailed the new-comer instantly.

"Welcome, Don Nepomuceno. You come at a good hour. See the wonderful
thing that has happened. This American señor that you were telling me of
only yesterday, who lives with the Indians of Santiago, has turned out
to be the very same man that plugged me in the great fight at Apache
Cañon nine years ago. We were just shaking hands over it as you came in,
and I've been showing him a little mark over my lungs that he gave me as
a remembrancer." Mr. Backus was speaking in Spanish, and Manuelita was
drinking in every syllable with intense interest.

"Well, if you come to that," returned Stephens, baring his left arm and
displaying the scar of an old bullet wound between the elbow and wrist,
"I can do ditto. Perhaps you didn't know that your bullet took me
through the fleshy part of the arm here," and he pointed with his finger
to the place where the ball had entered.

Don Nepomuceno Sanchez, who had seen fighting in the wars with the
Navajos, and knew well what wounds were, came forward to examine the
scars of either man with critical eyes. "Truly these are honourable
scars," he said; "tell me about it, please, if you don't mind talking
over old war times."

"Well, señor," said Backus, in his rapid, fluent Spanish, "it was like
this: we were fighting there in the hills, on opposite sides, as of
course you know; and naturally, being all frontiersmen on both sides, we
advanced under cover as much as ever we could, firing as we got a
chance. And so it came about that he and I, sudden-like, found ourselves
quite close to one another in the brush, and we both fired as it might
be at the same moment. He must have missed me clean that time, but
according to the way he tells it, I must have plugged him right through
that left arm of his; I didn't even know as I'd touched him though, for
it never seemed to phase him, and we both of us set to reloading in a
hurry, you bet. We both put in the powder, and both rammed down the
bullets, and I had got a trifle ahead of him as I brought up my gun to
the hip in order to have it ready to put on the cap. Wal', I'm jiggered
if he didn't leave out the capping part of the business, and brought his
piece straight up to his shoulder to draw a bead on me. You bet I just
thought I knowed as I'd got the deadwood on him then. 'Got ye, Yank,' I
called out, slipping the cap on my tube, 'ye haint capped yer gun.'
'Don't want to,' sez he; and whang-g-g! she went, and took me right here
through the lung; and that was the last I ever knowed of anything for
about a day and a half. You see, he had some kind of a gol-durned,
stem-winding trick on his gun that did the capping for him, that I
didn't know nothing about."

"Well, now it's all over," said Stephens frankly, "I'm real glad to
learn that your wound wasn't mortal. My company fell back directly after
we exchanged shots, so that I never knew what had become of you."

"Oh," said the Texan, "they patched me up in the hospital somehow or
another, and then I was took in and nursed in a Mexican family, and the
end of it was I married one of the darters and settled in the Territory,
and here I am with a wife and three kids, and running a store. I do keep
a little good whisky, too, you may like to know. Say, won't you take a
drink? It's my treat. You'll join us in a _tragito_, won't you, Don
Nepomuceno?"

"I'll drink with you with pleasure," said Stephens, "if you'll allow me
to take it in something like a lemon soda. Whisky's a thing I don't use,
if you'll excuse me."

"Surely, surely," in amiable tones remarked Mr. Backus, who was setting
out on the counter a three-parts full decanter and some glasses. "I'll
try and mix something of the lemon-soda order as near as I can fix it."
He had hoped to get Stephens into a loquacious mood and pump him over a
few social drinks, but he was too cunning to show any trace of
disappointment. "Every man has a right to choose his own liquor; I don't
quarrel with no man's taste," he said, as he passed the decanter to Don
Nepomuceno, with a familiar "Help yourself, friend," and busied himself
in searching for materials for concocting some kind of a temperance
drink for his other guest.

Sanchez poured a little of the strong spirit into a glass and filled it
up with water. "You are coming to take dinner in my house presently, are
you not, Don Estevan?" he said in his courteous tones, addressing
Stephens, who accepted the invitation cordially. "Manuelita, my child,"
he turned to his eldest daughter, "run home now quick with Altagracia,
and tell your aunt that Don Estevan is coming and to have dinner ready
soon."

The temperance drink was compounded, and the three men clinked glasses
and pledged each other.

"And what have you bin' doing ever since our last meeting?" said Mr.
Backus genially to his former foe. "I've give ye my story; now let's
hear yourn."

"Mining," said Stephens with curt emphasis. The word made the Texan give
a start of surprise. "Yes," he continued, "it's mining and prospecting
for gold and silver that has been my trade ever since; and, what's more,
I've travelled over a good part of the Pacific slope at it, too. It's a
game you get terribly stuck on after once you take to it."

"Mining, eh?" said the Texan with affected indifference. "Wal', that
ar's a thing as I dunno nothin' at all about."

He gave a careless laugh. "Oh, by the way," he said, turning his back on
the two men and rummaging on the shelf behind him for a couple of cans
of oysters which he displayed with a great show of earnestness, "that's
the brand of oysters, Don Nepomuceno, that I meant to bring to your
notice, first chance. I can recommend 'em; they're prime."

"Yes," he continued, turning again to Stephens, "you was saying as how
you was interested in mines; but as far as that goes, why there ain't no
mines being worked in this part of the country, not as I know of." A
suspicious man might have guessed that Backus's interest in the
possibility of a mine in the neighbourhood of Santiago was a good deal
stronger than he chose to let appear, but John Stephens was not of a
suspicious nature.

"No," he said in reply, "there aren't any now, but there have been, and
there will be again, if I'm any judge." Then, reflecting that he might
say too much, and checking himself he went on more cautiously. "But I
don't see any opening here myself. I guess I'm about through with New
Mexico for the present, and I calculate to light out for Colorado pretty
soon. The railroads have got in there, and there's a boom on."

Mr. Backus was sharp at reading other people's motives, and saw in an
instant that Stephens was trying to disguise his. So much the more
reason for finding out what they were.

"What! going off to Colorado?" he exclaimed with an air of surprise.
"Why, I'd understood from the folks here that you had settled down in
Santiago for keeps. That's really how I come to hear of you; I heard
that you was a white man living amongst them Indians, and had joined the
tribe; so I supposed you was adopted by them, and had gone and got
hitched up with a squaw."

Stephens's eyes flashed.

"Shouldn't wonder if that drawed him out a bit," reflected Mr. Backus
privately to himself.

"If anyone told you so," said the prospector stiffly, "let me tell you
that you have been misinformed. No sir, squaws aren't in my line; I'm
not that sort of a man. I never have proposed to go outside of my own
colour, and I never will."

Mr. Backus gave a short laugh. The word colour touched him on the raw.
He was married to a Mexican, and many Americans are undiscriminating
enough to class the Mexicans with coloured people. The Mexicans
themselves naturally resent such a slight on their race; although a part
of them have more or less Indian blood in their veins, they prefer to
ignore that side of their pedigree and trace their descent solely back
to the conquering cavaliers of Spain. But Mr. Backus was himself a
quarter-blooded Indian. He called himself a Texan, and passed as such;
though he was born in the Indian Territory and his mother had been a
half-breed Cherokee.

He changed the subject abruptly. "Fill your glass again, Don," he said,
pushing the decanter towards the Mexican. "It's good whiskey, real old
Bourbon. 'There isn't a headache in a hogshead of it,' as the Irishman
said."

"A thousand thanks, no, if you will excuse me," replied the Mexican, "I
have sufficient. I think I must be going," he went on, for indeed he
felt a little out of it, seeing that the two Americans had dropped back
instinctively into talking in their own language, of which he knew but a
few words. "I shall see you again, then, presently, Don Estevan, at my
house," and bowing politely he departed homewards.

"That man's darned well fixed, I can tell you," remarked the
storekeeper, refilling his own glass and tossing it off as soon as the
Mexican had gone. "And what's more, he's a square man, too. I don't mind
saying that Nepomuceno Sanchez can just have all the credit he wants at
this store. He's one of the heirs to the Sanchez grant, and that gives
him the use of all the pasture land he needs for his sheep. He's a very
peart business man, for a Mexican. I used to come across him over in
Peña Blanca, you know. He's a relation of old man Baca's by marriage,
and he's got a lot of his sheep on shares and makes a good thing of it."

The personage irreverently referred to by the Texan as "old man Baca"
was the head of the family of that name, and a man of no small position
and wealth. The old families of New Mexico own immense flocks of hardy
little Mexican sheep, whose numbers often run into hundreds of
thousands. Their flocks are divided into bands of a few thousand and let
out on shares to retainers, who return a rent in kind of the wool and
the increase. The relation between these retainers and the heads of the
great families is semi-feudal.

"Yes," said Stephens, "taking sheep on shares is a good business. I've
seen his son, young Andrés Sanchez, up there on that Sanchez grant with
their sheep herd when I've been out on the mountains."

"Oh, you've been up on the mountains round here?" said Backus, who saw
his chance to lead the conversation once more in the direction he
wanted. "Mining, I suppose?" he added, as if it were an afterthought.

"Well, I've prospected some," returned the other. "But you've heard me
say I didn't think much of the opening here."

"Ever take any of the Indians out prospecting with you?" inquired the
Texan. "They've bin here so long they'd ought to know if there's
anything lying around worth looking at. Did they never tell you anything
about mines?" He let these last words fall after a pause with studied
carelessness.

"No, sir," said the prospector, "I've learnt nothing from the Indians,
and it's highly possible that they've nothing to tell."

"You never thought to ask 'em, I suppose?" suggested Backus.

"Why should I?" returned the other quietly. "May I ask, Mr. Backus, if
you've any special reason for these questions?"

The Texan hesitated; he felt sure now that his old antagonist was not at
Santiago by mere chance, but had an object in view which he did not
care to disclose. He quickly decided to try and gain his confidence by a
show of openness.

"Wal', yes, I have," he admitted; "I guess I've got some information
that might be of value to anyone as knew how to use it."

"What could he mean?" Stephens thought. "Was this information the
knowledge of the secret mine? If so, it might be worth while to make
terms with him, as the Indians seemed to be so impracticable."

"If anyone will show me a mine," said the prospector, "I can tell him if
it's worth working, and how to work it."

"Yes," returned Backus, "and if so what terms would you expect?"

"A half-interest," said Stephens. "If I thought it good enough I'd take
a half-interest and bear my share of the expenses."

"That's a square offer," replied the Texan. "Now look at here. Now,
s'posin' I was to tell you of a mine in this neighbourhood, you'd be
willing to do that with me?"

"Are you referring to the lost mine of the Indians?" asked the
prospector. It was not worth while to make any further mystery of the
matter, for the Texan had obviously heard the story.

"That's just what I am," said Backus. "I thought as how you must have
heard some talk about it. Now you allow as you don't know where it is."

"I do not," said the other.

"Wal', I do," said Backus. "And I'll tell it to you on your own terms,
and that's a half-interest for each of us. It's on the Indian grant up
in the mountains."

"Well, I knew that much," said Stephens.

"Ah," returned the Texan, "but I can tell you more'n that. The Indians
haint got no right to keep it; that grant haint been confirmed to them
by act of Congress."

"But, my dear sir," returned Stephens, with something that savoured of
contempt, "you're revealing to me as your precious secret what's matter
of common knowledge. If you ask anyone in the office at Santa Fé,
they'll tell you that the grant to the Indians of four square leagues
round the pueblo has been confirmed to them, and that they own it from
grass-roots to Hades by a perfectly indefeasible title; but they'll tell
you there, too, in the office, that the twenty miles square that they
claim in the mountains has never been confirmed, and for that matter is
overlapped by half a dozen unconfirmed Mexican grants as well. The real
title to that land is in the United States Government. That's as old as
a last year's bird's-nest."

"I see you're well posted in the business," said Backus; "but maybe you
don't know that the secret mine's on the Cerro de las Viboras. I can
tell you that."

"If you can show it to me up there on that Rattlesnake Mountain, Mr.
Backus," was Stephens's reply, "I'm ready to acknowledge at once that
you'll show me something I don't know. But as you know so much you are
probably aware that the mine has been closed for a hundred years or
more, and that rumour locates it in a dozen different places, and that
to look for it on the Cerro without knowing where it is is to look for a
needle in a haystack. I've been all around that Cerro, you can bet, but
I haven't run across the mine. The Cerro's a mountain five miles round
and five thousand feet high, and a precious rough mountain at that. I'm
willing to go up there again; I'm ready to start to-morrow if you like;
and if you'll show me the mine there I'm ready to do as I said with you
about working it; but unless you can do that I don't consider that what
has passed constitutes any claim between us on either side."

"Wal'," said the Texan, "I couldn't leave the store here just yet, not
till I get things straightened out and settled down. Nor I won't swear
for sartin as I can put you right on to the exact spot, seein' as how
I've not been up thar myself yet; but mebbe I can before long, and I
reckon that ought to be enough for ye. Say, look here, couldn't we work
it between us, somehow, to get them Indians to show us the spot?"

This intrusive Texan had so far told Stephens nothing he did not know
already, and now here he was wanting to poach on the prospector's
private preserve--his personal influence with the Indians.

"That's what I've been trying to do already, Mr. Backus," said Stephens
irritably; "and, to be plain with you, I'm not looking out for a partner
in this matter."

"Ah, but mebbe that's just what you want," returned the storekeeper
imperturbably; "mebbe the reason as you haint won nary trick so far is
that you've bin playing a lone hand. Now, I'll gamble from what you said
just now that you've bin trying to get the secret out of the bucks over
there, and that you haven't tried the women for it at all. Now, aint I
right?" and he gave the other a cunning look.

"I've never seen any reason to think that the women know anything about
it," returned Stephens. "It isn't likely they would." The idea had
never even occurred to him.

"Ah, and I'll gamble they do," replied Backus. "I know a thing or two
about Indians myself, and it's a great trick of theirs to let some of
the squaws--only some, mind you--keep some of the secrets of the tribe.
You see they don't go and get killed off like the bucks, so it acts as a
kind of safeguard against losing the knowledge of a thing entirely that
way. Aint there some extra high-toned women, now, in the Santiago
tribe,--chief's darters and the like, eh?" His keen black eyes were
turned on the other with a cunning inquisitiveness. "Yes, by the way,
aint there a white squaw in the tribe somewheres?"

Stephens was startled. "You've taken a lot of trouble to find out
things, I fancy, Mr. Backus," he said rather suspiciously; "a great deal
more, indeed, than you seemed inclined to let on at first. But you're
quite right. Yes, there is a white squaw in the tribe, and she's the
daughter of the cacique."

Backus listened with extreme interest. "You reckon she's an Indian,
then?" he said. "You don't think she's a white girl they've picked up
and adopted, by any chance? I've seen a good few sorts of Indians, but
never any white ones yet."

"Oh no, she's Indian, right enough," said Stephens; "she's a natural
Indian blonde, as fair-complected as I am. They're none so rare among
these Pueblo Indians. There's twenty or thirty of them over in Zuñi."

"I wanter know!" exclaimed the Texan, by which phrase he indicated
extreme surprise. "Wal', she might be worth trying. The cacique had
ought to know the secret if anybody does, and she'd be as likely as any
of the squaws to be let into it. Why shouldn't you tackle her? Is she
married?"

"No, she's not married yet," replied the other.

"Wal', there's yer chance," said the storekeeper, with a knowing grin;
"but I forgot, you draw the line pretty close in the matter of colour;
or mebbe, she being light-complected as yourself, you'd reckon she was
white enough to suit you."

Stephens flushed; he had given this man no right to intrude these
familiarities upon him; in silence he picked up his parcels to go. When
you have just been forgiven by a man for shooting him through the lungs,
you can hardly blaze out at him for being a trifle too personal in his
conversation.

"Wal', I'm going to be up there right along," continued the storekeeper,
seeing that Stephens volunteered no further comment, and was preparing
to start, "and then you can introduce me. I'm going to make a bid for
the trade of the pueblo anyhow, and I'll have to get on the right side
of the cacique for that, and I might as well get the inside track with
the girl, too. It's all in the family, eh?" He grinned again with a kind
of a grin that Stephens loathed. "And't won't be trespassing on your
property neither, I s'pose?"

"I leave the Indian women alone, Mr. Backus, as I think I told you
before," said Stephens haughtily, and he drew himself up and moved to
the door.

"Oh, no offence," cried the other quickly, following him; "I see you're
high-toned, of course. I didn't mean nothing low-down, nohow"; he
attended the prospector out to the hitching-post, where the mule was
fastened, and watched him as he put the parcels into his saddle-bags.

"That's a real nice California saddle of yourn," he said in a
propitiatory tone, "and an A1 mule wearing it. Wal', when are you going
to ask me to come and meet Miss Pocahontas?"

"I'm afraid I'm off to the sierra to-morrow on a hunt," was the somewhat
ungracious reply, "but we may meet again later on when I come back,
before I start for Colorado, if I decide after all to go there"; and he
swung himself into his saddle and raised his bridle rein.

"What makes ye so sot on leavin' this Territory?" queried Backus, laying
his hand on the mule's neck and walking a few paces alongside the
parting guest. "Aint it most time for ye to quit all this rovin' round,
and settle down? Why don't you ask Don Nepomuceno, now, for his darter?
She's gone on you already, if you only knowed it. When you was fingering
your revolver there in the store just now--oh, I seen what your little
game was, right enough--her eyes was just glued to you. Oh yes; if I was
watching you close, right along the hull time, you bet I kept my little
eye open for what the women thought of it all as well. You bet I aint no
innercent; I aint bin and lived here these seven years in New Mexico
without learning to watch the women every time. I'm on the spot there,
and no mistake. I know how a girl looks when she thinks as how her man's
in danger that she's gone on. You ask her father for her, and you'll
find you've got the inside track there, or my name aint Tom Backus."

"Really, Mr. Backus," replied Stephens, "you've set yourself to discuss
a matter I prefer not to talk about. I think I'll say good morning now."

With a regretful air Mr. Backus removed his hand from the mule's neck,
and remained there still looking at Stephens's back, while the animal
he bestrode, feeling its rider's spurs, quickened its pace.

"Wal', so long," he cried after him as the distance between them rapidly
increased. "You'd better think over that idea of mine. Take care of
yerself now. Good men is scarce"--"and prospectors who know a mine when
they see it are scarcer, just now, in this part of the world," he
continued to himself. "I've no fancy to have you putting out for
Colorado till you've done my bit of work for me down here, Mister
Stephens. If I can once get you to fooling with that squaw girl, I'll
bet a dollar you can get the secret of the Indians' silver mine out of
her; and if she ain't enough to keep you here you may sport around after
Miss Manuelita, but stop here you must till you've found that mine for
me. You find it and I take the profits, that's fair division," and he
gave a chuckle of satisfaction; "and when the time comes for paying you
your share, you'll find I haint forgotten how to shoot. Lord! what luck
to drop on you like this, and you as innercent as a new-born babby, for
all your fingering your six-shooter the way you did. I reckon you'll
just play the cards as I deal 'em, and never spot me a-raising a cold
deck on you, as I will."




CHAPTER VII

DESDEMONA LISTENS


It was but slowly that Manuelita obeyed her father's order to return
home; her little feet lagged as the girl dwelt on the scene she had just
witnessed, and wondered what it meant. Somehow this American always set
her wondering about something. His very unlikeness to the men whom she
had hitherto lived among made him appear almost as strange to her as a
visitor from another world. He had begun by half repelling, and had
ended by fascinating her; on this point the guess of the coarse-minded
but quick-witted Texan was not mistaken. Although in speech and manners,
in all his tastes and habits, Stephens offered a complete contrast to
her Mexican fellow-countrymen, he himself with his light hair and fair
complexion was not a type absolutely new to this girl, for in the place
of honour in her grandfather's dining-room had hung a portrait of a
golden-haired _caballero_, the great Manuel Sanchez, the friend of
Cortez; and Manuelita had woven so many romantic dreams about her
glorious ancestor that this fair-haired American had come to seem to her
a sort of copy of her hero of romance. It was only in dreams and
traditions that the girl had met with heroes; the secluded life led by
Mexican ladies was in her case more solitary than usual, for the Sanchez
family was poor (poor for its position, that is) but proud, and
Manuelita turned up her pretty nose at the few young rancheros of the
neighbourhood, and held them beneath the notice of the daughter of a
_conquistador_. The girl's passionate southern nature, with all its
capacity for devotion, had slept longer than was usual among her people,
and when her heart should awake it would be the heart of a woman, not of
a schoolgirl. The young rancheros flaunted their silver spurs and velvet
jackets at the Fiestas in vain; they swore the señorita was as wild as
an antelope; and, like an antelope, she was caught by her curiosity. She
could not keep from speculating on the strange character of this
American who bore the golden locks of her great ancestor. The character
of a handsome young man is a dangerous study for the peace of mind of a
girl, and her interest in the stranger grew so rapidly that soon it
seemed to her that there was little else worth studying "beneath the
visiting moon."

Nor was the opportunity lacking. Stephens had struck up quite a
friendship with her father in the course of the winter, and had got into
the way, especially on mail days, of dropping in for a chat with his
Mexican crony, who, within his somewhat narrow intellectual limits, was
a man both of strong character and active mind. She had listened to them
talking together by the hour. The Mexican had many incidents to tell of
the ceaseless struggles of his people with the marauding Navajo Indians,
who had been but lately reduced to subjection, and of the hardly less
constant struggle between the rival great families, the Bacas, the
Armijos, the Chavez, and the rest, for supremacy among themselves. The
American found no lack of matter in the tale of his wanderings between
the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, and of the toils and hopes
of a seeker after gold. To her, directly, he had not spoken very much;
as an unmarried girl, under the watchful tutelage of her aunt, she was
not expected to take a prominent part in conversation, but she went and
came freely between the living-room where her father entertained his
guest, and the sleeping-chambers which opened off it and the kitchen
communicating with it on the other side.

Once, too, it had been her luck to see the American perform a feat that
impressed her not a little. She had gone out one evening with Juana, the
Navajo captive who had been brought up in the house as a bondservant, to
bring in the milk from the corral, when she caught sight in the dusk of
an animal prowling near that seemed like a dog, and yet was assuredly
something other than a dog. The two girls ran indoors, crying out that
there was a wild beast of some kind, a wolf they thought, close by, and
Stephens, who was sitting with her father, sprang up, seized his
Winchester, which stood in the corner, and hastily threw a cartridge
into it as he stepped forth, while she followed to point out the
marauder. There, in the dim light, some seventy yards away, the animal
stood, hesitating whether to advance or to fly. She well remembered the
quick, smooth, steady action with which the rifle came up, came level,
went off; the loud clap of the bullet hitting the object; and the
nonchalant way in which the tall American had turned on his heel and,
without any apparent interest in the effect of his shot, had gone in and
replaced the rifle in its corner, merely remarking, "I reckon it's
nothing but a coyote."

Pedro, the peon, had run to see, and presently brought in the limp body
of the animal, a coyote as he had guessed, its skull shattered to a pulp
by the deadly hollow bullet. But what impressed her more than the
death-dealing powers of the terrible weapon, was the quiet confidence
exhibited by the marksman in his rapid aim, a confidence so entirely
justified by the event; and it was this that struck deep into her
imagination.

Yes, in her eyes, without doubt, the American was a hero; and yet he was
but a cold-hearted hero after all. He could turn a compliment because he
had picked up the trick of it from the young Mexicans whom he met
occasionally in Don Nepomuceno's house, but his compliments lacked the
fanciful gallantry of the words of her countrymen; yes, he was hard, she
was sure of it, hard and cold as the ice-bound soil of his own frozen
North; she would waste no more thoughts on him, she resolved; and then
she thought of him more than ever, and it was in such a mood as this
that she re-entered her father's door.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Stephens turned his back somewhat ungraciously on Mr. Backus in
front of the stage station, he rode off without casting a look behind
him, and urged his mule forward at an easy amble towards the house where
he was expected. Those last words of the storekeeper had jarred on him
very unpleasantly. Who had asked this intruder to spy on the expression
of the girl's face? What business was it of his anyhow? Of course it was
all rubbish. He himself had never said a single word to Manuelita that
all the world might not hear. Of course he had to pay her a compliment
once in a while; he could hardly do less, coming and going at the house
as he did, and all these Mexican señoras and señoritas expected it, just
as the girls back in Ohio expected you to treat them to candy and
ice-cream. That never meant anything particular, neither did his
compliments, and she was much too sensible a girl to think they did. It
was characteristic of the man that he never for a moment thought of
himself as likely by his person and his character to make an impression
on a girl's heart. The idea that came into his head when Backus made the
suggestion was that if there was anything in it it must be due to this
precious art of paying compliments, which was about the only point in
Mexican manners that he had taken any special pains to acquire. But the
whole thing was rubbish, so he assured himself again and again. Sanchez
was no fool, and no more was his daughter. They were kindly people, who
had behaved with true Mexican hospitality to a stranger--but they were
people of another race: their customs, their beliefs, their ideals, were
all strange to him. Between an American and a Mexican there could be no
real community of feeling. And yet some Americans did marry Mexicans,
and did not seem to repent it. Even that low-down skunk of a
storekeeper, who was an American of sorts, had a Mexican wife. Probably
she was not much to boast of, a mere peon's daughter most likely,--well,
that was his taste. But there were other Americans who had Mexican
wives; he could count up several whom he had seen in Santa Fé,--traders,
Government employés, and the like,--and they had as comfortable homes as
if they had gone back to the States and married American girls. But
confound that Backus's impudence! What should he know about these
Sanchez folks anyway?

Beneath all this anger lay two very uncomfortable suspicions. One was
that the storekeeper was a man with a great deal of low cunning, and
might have, as indeed he boasted, most confoundedly sharp eyes for
prying into other people's affairs; and the other was that he,
Stephens, had never given such an affair as this a serious thought
before, and knew precious little about womankind in general; and this
last thought of his was much truer than he himself realised.

There are no men whose experience of women, as a rule, is so small as
the pioneers of a new country. In older countries there are unmarried
men in plenty, but they are brought into frequent daily contact with the
other sex unless they take deliberate pains to prevent it, and not
seldom they prove to understand women better than those who might be
supposed to have a better right. But the celibates of a new country are
quite different. In their case it is not choice but necessity that makes
the mere sight of a woman's face a rare thing. In the wild, remote
mining camps where Stephens's years of adventure had been mostly passed,
among a thousand men there would barely be a score or so who ever
brought their women-folks along. True enough, where the miners had
struck it rich, and hundreds and thousands of dollars were being taken
out by eager crowds of men, another class of women did not delay long in
appearing upon the scene; but that was a class from which Stephens
studiously kept aloof. He had not even the perverted experience that may
be thus gained; and he positively knew less at nine-and-twenty about the
ways in which girls think and feel than he had known before he left home
at nineteen. If he knew little he had been contented with his ignorance,
but now this random shaft of the storekeeper had gone home, and he was
contented no longer.

Alighting from Captain Jinks before Don Nepomuceno's door, he was
welcomed by the Mexican, who insisted on unsaddling the mule for him
himself, loudly calling meanwhile for Pedro to come and take him round
to the corral and give him some corn. The house was built in Mexican
style, of sun-dried bricks, in the form of a hollow square, with a
patio, or courtyard, in the centre on which all the doors and windows
gave, the outer wall being blank except for a peephole or two high up.
It had a flat clay roof, with a low parapet all round. It was, in fact,
a miniature castle, as was every house in the country of any pretensions
built during the days when the Navajos and Apaches were a constant
terror in the land. Stephens followed his host inside after taking off
his spurs, Spanish fashion. He had unbuckled his belt and handed it,
revolver and all, to his host, begging him to take charge of it. This,
too, he had learned was a piece of Spanish etiquette. You give him your
arms to keep, for you are under his protection. Don Nepomuceno bustled
around, laying the saddle with its "cantines" neatly in a corner, with
the saddle blanket over it, and hanging up the belt on a peg, while he
kept calling out to his sister to bring in the dinner, and to the Navajo
captive, Juana, to bring water for washing. There were no chairs or
tables, but a broad divan covered with gaily striped serapes ran all
along one side of the room and served as a seat.

On this Stephens sat down, and, while the master of the house showed his
hospitable ardour by urging the women in the kitchen to make a wholly
unnecessary haste, the American drew from his pocket the letter he had
received at the stage station, and proceeded to read it. It ran as
follows:


     "THE WHAT CHEER HOUSE, DENVER, COL.,
     "April 2, 187-.

     "_To Mr. John Stephens, among the Pueblo Indians of Santiago,
     N.M._

     "FRIEND STEPHENS,--It's two years and a half ago that you and me
     parted company in Helena, Montana, after I'd done my best to bust
     you that time, you remember. I've knocked around and had my ups and
     downs since, but I haven't done so badly on the whole. Last summer
     I was in Col. here, and I got on to a goodish thing up on Boulder.
     I wish you would come up here this summer and join me in trying to
     work it, for I think if it was handled right there's big money in
     it for both of us. I don't want to say too much, for I don't feel
     plumb sure of this letter reaching you. And for the same reason I
     don't put in a draft for what I owe you still, but I've got it here
     for you all right and regular, and if you can't come you've only
     got to let me know where and how to send it, and it's yours. I'm
     well enough fixed now to be able to do it right enough. I don't
     know if there's any chance of this letter finding you. I haven't
     heard sign or sound of you since we quit being pardners, till
     yesterday I run on to that Sam Argles as you may remember in Helena
     in old times; he'd been wintering away down in Arizona, and he said
     as how when he was passing through New Mexico a stage driver there
     told him as he knowed of a white man, calling himself John
     Stephens, that had been a miner, and was living now with the
     Indians of Santiago, N.M. That Sam Argles is an old gasbag, sure,
     but I had to allow as it sounded like you in some ways, for he said
     the driver said this Stephens wouldn't never drink nor gamble; but
     he said too another thing, that he was living there with 'em as a
     squawman, and then I didn't hardly believe as it could be you, but
     I guessed that stage driver might have been lying, and so figuring
     on it like that I calculated I might as well write you there.
     Hoping as it is you, and that you're going strong and doing fine, I
     remain, your former pard,

     "JEFF. A. ROCKYFELLER.

     "You can address me, care of Hepburn & Davis, 397 Arapahoe,
     Denver."


Stephens perused this letter with a dry smile upon his face.

"Yes, Rocky," he said, apostrophising his ex-partner, "it's me, sure
pop, that Mr. Sam Argles heard of here; but I'm not a squawman yet, not
quite; you were right not to believe that, not if all the darned fool
stage drivers in the country were to swear to it."

By the code of the West, a squawman is nothing less than a renegade to
his own race, and is hated accordingly.

He refolded the letter and placed it back in his pocket, as Juana
appeared bearing a towel and soap and a bowl, which she placed on the
clean-swept floor in front of him preparatory to aiding him to wash by
pouring a little stream of water over his hands. The Navajo handmaiden,
having been captured as a child, had been brought up in Mexican style,
but her blood was pure Indian; that showed plainly in her impassive face
as she held the towel for him to wipe his hands, and the strong animal
expression given by the heavy jaw and dark skin struck him forcibly. He
wondered what she was thinking of as she stood there as still as if she
had been cast in bronze, and he reflected, with some disgust at his own
stupidity, that that 'cute storekeeper down below could probably have
made a pretty accurate guess. Yes, in future he positively would pay
more attention to what women were thinking about. In that respect there
was no doubt he must amend his ways.

At last Don Nepomuceno condescended to settle down and seat himself on
the divan beside his guest; a low table was brought in and placed before
them, and on it were set two bowls of rich mutton-broth. When the empty
bowls were removed by Juana, the master of the house called out loudly,
so as to be heard in the kitchen through the open door, "It is very
excellent broth! Ah, what capital broth!"

"I have often heard it said," remarked Stephens, by way of showing his
appreciation, "that the Mexican ladies make the best soup in the world."

"It is true, Don Estevan, it is quite true. They are capital cooks,
capital. I wonder now, Don Estevan, that you can be contented to cook
for yourself. Cooking seems such a waste of time for a man!"

Stephens laughed. "It's my bad luck, señor," he said. "You see, the
ladies wouldn't ever look at a rover like myself."

"Don't you believe it, don't you believe it," cried the other; "indeed
you have no call to say so. Ah, here is the stew," he added, as Juana
set down before each of them two small saucers, one of frijoles, or
Mexican beans boiled with onions, and one of stewed mutton with red
pepper; in fact both dishes were made nearly red-hot by a liberal
admixture of the famous chili colorado. For bread she laid before them
tortillas, large thin pancakes of the blue Indian corn, peculiar to New
Mexico.

Following the example of his host, Stephens broke off a piece of
tortilla, formed it into a scoop, and dipping up mouthfuls of the two
messes alternately, thus consumed both bread and meat together. His
host's approval of this course was delivered for the benefit of the
kitchen as emphatically as it had been of the soup.

"It is very savoury meat," he shouted in his commanding voice, as soon
as he had tasted two or three mouthfuls from each saucer, "very savoury;
and they are excellent beans, delicious beans. Ah yes, Don Estevan," he
continued to his guest, "what a pity it is that you have not someone to
cook for you like this. To live all by yourself is so solitary, so
_triste_."

"Yes," answered the American quietly; "but how should I do when I went
off to the mountains prospecting? I'm off again, I expect, shortly, to
Colorado, you see; and what would I do with the cook then?"

"But why do you go?" queried his host. "Is it not time for you to leave
off this wandering, roving life of yours and settle down? You are rich,
everybody knows. You should marry, man, marry, and enjoy yourself"; he
dropped into a more familiar tone,--"yes, marry before old age comes.
You are a young man still, but age will be upon you before you know it."

Stephens, instead of giving a direct answer, made play with the tortilla
and the stew. "I do begin to believe that cunning Backus was nearer
right than I had any idea of," he said to himself. "I suppose this means
that my good friend here wants to suggest that he'll find me a wife in
short order if I say so--only, as it happens, he's a little too
previous; I aint ready just yet." By this time he had consumed
sufficient of the stew to set a dry man on fire, and utilised this fact
to change the subject.

"Excuse me," said he, "but may I, by your permission, beg for a drink of
water? This meat is delicious, but the chili makes me rather thirsty."

"Oh, certainly," cried his hospitable host; "but we have coffee coming.
We have coffee here. Bring the coffee, Juana, at once," he shouted to
the bondmaid.

"Water, please, if I may be so bold, Don Nepomuceno," pleaded Stephens,
whose mouth was really burning.

"Yes, yes; bring water, then, Juana," cried the other, anxious to
accommodate his guest. "Or would you not like a little atole? There is
atole, too, plenty of it."

Atole is an old and favourite Mexican drink made of the finest Indian
corn meal boiled till it becomes a thin gruel.

A jug of atole presently appeared with two cups, and the American was
permitted to ease the burning sensations of his palate.

"Thank you," he said gratefully, putting down the cup; "that's very
refreshing. Atole is a real good drink, Don Nepomuceno."

"Oh, yes," said the latter, "it's a good drink enough; but now that
coffee has come in so much, it is used more by our handmaidens and the
peons. All the well-to-do people here buy coffee, with sugar, now. We
will have the coffee in in a minute. Tell them to make haste with the
coffee, Juana. Did you never hear," he continued to Stephens, "the song
that the musician of San Remo has made about Mr. Coffee and Mr. Atole?
It is comic, you must know, very comic. You see Mr. Coffee comes from
far, far away off in Tamaulipas, or farther still, to cut out his rival
Mr. Atole. And then they meet, and the pair have a conversation, and Mr.
Coffee tells poor Mr. Atole that he is doomed. Let me see, how does it
go? Oh yes, Mr. Coffee begins, and he says to the other jokingly:


     "'Como te va, amigo Atole?
     Como has pasado tu tiempo;
     Desde lejos hé venido
     Para hacer tu testamento.'

     "'How do you do, Mr. Gruel?
     I fear you are rather unwell;
     I've taken a mighty long journey
     To ring your funeral knell.'


That's how it goes, Don Estevan. There's a great deal more of it; they
go on arguing ever so long. We must get him in some time and make him
repeat it all for you."

"You're most kind, I'm sure," said the American, wondering in himself
the while how any human being could be amused by such a rigmarole
concerning Messrs. Coffee and Atole. But there was no accounting for
tastes; and he had found out that American humour did not seem at all
funny to Mexican ears, while his recent experience in blasting the ditch
had taught him that the mildest of American jokes might send red Indians
on the war-path. A difference in the sense of humour goes down to the
very roots of our nature.

They had finished dinner by this time, and the American, declining a
cigarette, filled his pipe, and rising went over to his saddle and
extracted from the "cantines" the packet which had come for him by mail.
He brought this over to his host and offered it to him.

"Here, señor," said he, "is a little bag I will beg you to accept. It is
from Denver; it contains some seed of alfalfa, that clover I told you
about, that grows so splendidly in California and Colorado."

The Mexican was warm in his thanks as he untied the bag and took a
sample in his hand.

"I told them to send me the best seed," said Stephens. "I think it ought
to grow well in this country. You'd better sow it soon in a piece of
your ploughed land, and irrigate it when it comes up."

"Yes, I will," said the Mexican. "I'll have it planted to-morrow in the
land I am preparing for corn. Come and see my seed corn; I am not
content with this common blue corn of the Indians. I have white corn
with big ears that I mean to sow. Come along to the storeroom and look
at it."

He led the way, and as they passed through the door they almost stepped
over Manuelita, who was seated on the ground just outside, busy cleaning
a large basket of frijoles. Stephens paused idly to look at what she was
doing, while her father bustled around, noisily demanding of his sister
where the key of the storeroom was. The girl's task struck him as
terribly tedious. She took up a small handful of beans at a time and
picked out one by one the little bits of stone that had got in when the
threshing was done, in the good old style, by the feet of the wild mares
on a floor of clay and gravel concrete.

"That's a long business you're in there," he remarked sympathetically.

"Yes," she answered, glancing up at him with a shy smile, "it takes
time," and she bent her eyes on her hand again so as not to interrupt
her work. He caught the beautiful smooth outline of her cheek with the
long dark lashes showing distinct against it.

"You don't mean to say you have to do the lot that way, picking out all
those bits of rock one at a time?" he asked.

"Oh, but yes, of course," she answered. "You would break your teeth if
we did not take them out before we cook them."

"But," he rejoined, his practical mind revolting against waste of
labour, "it'll take you a good hour to do that lot the way you're doing
it, and you could do it better in three minutes." His tone was oracular.

"I don't think it's possible," she said, "unless you had a witch to do
it. There is an old woman, the mother of Pedro, that we get sometimes,
but she often leaves some in, and then my father hurts his teeth. The
people here call her a witch, but she would take three hours instead of
three minutes."

"Well, I'm no witch," said he, "though the Indians here wanted to play
me for one this morning. But you give me a pan--a milk-pan'll do--and
I'll show you."

The pan was brought, and he put in the beans and poured in water enough
to set them a-swim. He gave the pan a few deft twirls and shook it from
side to side.

"This is the way we wash gravel to get the gold, señorita," he said, as
he set it down. "The rocks are all at the bottom of that pan now, you
bet. If you'll kindly give me another pan to put the beans into," he
went on, "I'll prove it to you."

The girl hastened to bring a second pan and put it beside the first, and
in doing so their hands touched.

"You'd better hold it there," said he, "while I shovel them across," and
with his hollowed palms he scooped the beans from one to the other. In
the pan he had shaken there now remained a little discoloured water, and
at the bottom about a teacupful of gravel.

"There you are," said he triumphantly; "here's your gravel in this one,
and there's your frijoles in that one. It's as easy as rolling off a
log." She looked agreeably surprised, and he laughed.

"How would you look," said he, "if those little rocks were nuggets, eh?
Coarse gold, heavy gold, eh?" He smiled a strange smile, and a strange
light shone in his eyes. "Many a thousand pounds of gravel I've washed,
looking for gold in the bottom of every one; but this is the first time
I ever panned out beans to get gravel. Maybe some day I'll find that
heavy gold yet, but God knows where."

He straightened himself up to his full height, leaving on the ground
the pan over which he had been stooping. His eyes ranged out across the
courtyard through the open gateway to distant pine-clad peaks standing
out against the intense blue of the sky.

Manuelita had likewise set down her pan, and was leaning her hand
against the side of the doorway and her head against her hand.

"I hope you will find it," she said, with a glance from the depths of
her liquid eyes. His eyes met hers and dwelt there for a moment.

"Thanks," he said; "your good wishes should bring good luck."

"I wish they might"; she half sighed as she spoke; "but which of us can
ever tell where good fortune comes from?"

And then broke in the voice of Don Nepomuceno, "Come along and see the
seed corn, Don Estevan. I have found the key."




CHAPTER VIII

CHILDREN OF THE SUN


They looked at the seed corn, and the American complimented Don
Nepomuceno on his enterprise as an improving farmer.

"Why don't you take to the business yourself?" said the Mexican, as he
relocked the door behind them. "You have money and you have a pair of
good mules. You could buy land and work-oxen and hire peons. You would
make your living at it easier than at the mining. How long have you been
a miner?"

"Ten years, on and off," answered the other. "It is a good slice out of
one's life, I admit"; there was a certain wistfulness in his tone. He
was beginning to think that perhaps he had missed a good deal of
happiness in his time.

"Ten years of wandering!" exclaimed the Mexican. "_Ay de mi_, but you
must be tired. Why should you want to go back to Colorado and begin it
all over again?"

"Well, for one thing," answered the other, "I've just heard from an old
pard of mine up there, and I think from the way he talks he's got hold
of a good thing. I'm going to see."

"And you'll go all that journey just to see!" said the other. "You trust
him? You think he's a good man?"

"Well, I don't know so much about that," admitted Stephens. "Truth to
tell, the last time I saw him we had considerable of a difference of
opinion; in fact we split, and we reckoned to stay split. You see, he
busted me up as we call it, ruined me, that is; only I had the luck to
sort of pull myself round. But that happened two years ago; all the same
I don't say that I want him for a pard again, though he must have pretty
well straightened himself out, the way he talks; but still, you bet, I'd
like mighty well to shake hands with him, right now."

"And he ruined you?" exclaimed the Mexican.

"Busted me wide open. Left me flat broke," said the American.

"How did it all happen?" asked the other. "Tell us all about it; we have
heard some of your adventures, but not this. Come into the sitting-room
here and let us have it."

"Well, if it won't bore you, you're welcome," said Stephens, following
his host and preparing to refill his pipe.

"Ah, you must smoke when you talk, I know," said Sanchez, "and you wish
to smoke your own American tobacco, for you do not like the flavour of
our New Mexican _punche_ in your pipe. Ho, a light here, Pedrito! quick,
bring a live coal for the señor."

Pedrito, a small son of the peon, came running from the kitchen with a
live coal in a piece of hoop iron, which he offered to Stephens, pulling
off his cap and standing bareheaded before the honoured guest, with
old-world courtesy. Manuelita knew very well what was up, and fixed
herself down to listen just by the door, where she could hear every
word. Stephens settled himself down comfortably on the divan, and began.

"I picked up with this partner, who has just written me this letter,
Rockyfeller his name is, when I was up in Idaho. We took to each other
kind of natural-like, and he and I pulled together as amiably as a span
of old wheel-horses for a goodish bit. We were quite different sort of
men, too, in ourselves; but somehow that seemed to make it all the
easier for us to get along. We worked in the mines all that winter, and
when spring came we had enough saved to rig out a real A1 prospecting
outfit. Rocky--that's what I called him--used to spree a bit every once
in a while, but nothing really to hurt, you know. He could pull up
short, which is more than most men who go on the spree have sense to do.
His sprees didn't prevent our saving over four hundred dollars. Then we
bought two cayuses to ride--cayuses is the name they give to those
broncho horses up that way,--and a good pack-mule and plenty of grub and
blankets. We put in the whole of that summer prospecting off in the
Coeur d'Alène country, and we staked out a lot of claims on different
lodes, and we put in a good bit of work on some of 'em so as to hold 'em
for the year. Well, come fall, we hadn't been able to sell any one of
our claims, and we hadn't taken out any high-grade ore that would pay
for packing over the mountains to any reduction works, and there we
were, short of cash. So we cleared from that Coeur d'Alène country at
last. It was too far from a railroad. We sold our claims for what we
could get, and that wasn't much, and we lit out for Montana, and there
that next summer we just did everlastingly prospect over some of the
roughest country I ever ran across. The Indians were powerful bad too,
to say nothing of the road-agents. But we struck it at last pretty rich
on a lode that we called 'The Last Lap'--that's the last round, you
know, that the horses make on a race-track. I'd spent eight mortal years
chasing my tail all round the Pacific slope looking for a good lode, and
here it was, after all, across on the head-waters of the Missouri in
Montana. We knew we'd got a good thing. The ledge was three to five feet
thick, with a nice, uniform lot of high-grade ore, and a special streak
that would assay up to five hundred dollars a ton. I never saw a nicer
lode. The only thing was, it was a plaguy long way from any quartz mill
for the free ore, and it was a plaguy sight farther to the only
reduction works that could handle the richest portions of it. Of course
what the mine wanted was a smelter of its own, right on the spot, but
that's what got us. We hadn't the capital to start it. It wanted at
least fifty or a hundred thousand dollars laid out before we could hope
to get back a cent. That mine was worth a million, if we'd had it in
California, but off there, five or six hundred miles from a railroad,
owned by us two prospectors who'd just about got to the end of our
tether, it was too big a thing for us to handle. Well, we did what work
we could on it. We sunk a shaft and ran a bit of a drift, and we went
into Helena and we offered a share in it to a few capitalists we thought
we could trust. None of 'em would even look at it. At last we ran on to
Colonel Starr,--old Beebee Starr; likely you never heard of him, but
they knew him well enough up there,--and he rode out with us to see it;
and he tumbled to it, too, as soon as ever he'd grubbed out a few
specimens with his own pick and had 'em assayed. Well, he wouldn't take
a half-interest and find the money to develop the mine, which was what
we wanted him to do, and we were stony-broke by that time except for our
cayuses and our camp outfit, and winter a-coming on; and the long and
short of it was that we gave Colonel Starr a quitclaim deed to our whole
interest in the Last Lap Lode for twelve thousand five hundred dollars
in greenbacks, paid down on the nail. The Last Lap has paid more than
that much in a month in dividends since then, but that's common enough;
that's how things do pan out; but I don't believe in whining over my
luck, never did. And I'd been waiting eight years for a look in, and I
didn't despise getting my half of the twelve thousand five hundred
dollars, if the Last Lap was worth a million.

"So we sold the best quartz mine in Montana, and that's where Rocky and
I split. We got the money from Colonel Starr in greenbacks, and it was a
roll as thick as my arm. And Rocky pouched it all, for I had to go out
to a cabin three miles out of town to see another old pard of mine who
had been crushed by a fall of rock and was dying. I know I ought never
to have left Rocky with that money on him; but what was I to do? It was
late in the day; I had to go; I couldn't take it along with me, for a
man was liable in those days to be held up anywhere round the outskirts
of town by those cursed road-agents. Rocky had kept plumb straight for
over a year. I trusted him, and I went. I got back to our hotel that
night about ten o'clock, and a man says to me, 'D'you know where your
pard Rocky's gone?'

"'No,' says I, 'aint he here?'

"'Not much,' says he; 'he's at Frenchy's, bucking agi'n' the tiger.'

"My heart felt like a lump of ice. I just turned right around and walked
across the road to where this Frenchy kept a faro bank, and went in.
There was Rocky, about half drunk, sitting at the table, with about
three little chips on the cloth before him. I went up and put my hand on
Rocky's shoulder and looked on. The dealer turned up the jack, I think
it was, and raked in Rocky's stake. Rocky turns his head and looks up at
me with a ghastly grin. 'Is that you?' says he; 'Jack, you'd orter hev
come before. I've had a devil of a run of bad luck; I'm cleaned out.'

"'In God's name,' says I, 'is that so?'

"'You bet,' says he.

"I felt as if my eyes were two big burning holes in my head. 'God
forgive you, Rocky,' says I, 'for playing the giddy goat, and me for
leaving you alone for one night in Helena, Montana. Come on out of this
now, Rocky, and I'll divide my share with you. I never went back on a
pard.'

"Then the big blow came. 'Your share?' says he; 'why it's all gone. It's
all gone, every dollar of it, and them chips you saw me lose was the end
of the Last Lap Lode.' I heard some bummer behind me give a laugh, one
of those whiskey-soaking galoots that think it funny to see the next man
cleaned out.

"I felt a queer lump in my throat, and I says to the banker, very
solemn, 'Mr. Frenchy, this gentleman here,' I was holding my hand on
Rocky, 'he's my pardner, and I must beg you to take notice that half
what you've won off him is my property that he had charge of.'

"'That's no use, young man,' says the banker to me. 'We play for keeps
in this house, and so you'll find it.'

"'We'll see about that,' says I. 'Now, Rocky, tell me, is the whole of
the Last Lap gone, the whole of the twelve thousand five hundred
dollars?'

"'Every last cent,' says Rocky. I could see by his looks that he felt
powerful mean.

"'Then, mister,' says I to the banker--I was determined to be deadly
civil--'six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars of what you've took
from this gentleman belongs to me.'

"'You're interfering with the progress of the game,' says he; 'and say,
look here, you don't need to make that remark of yours here again.
That's entirely a matter between you and your pard; it's none of my
business, but if you want any advice of me, it is that you take him
outside and settle it with him.'

"He had his gang around him, and I saw that they had the deadwood on me,
and the other players wanted to go ahead with their game. I was a
stranger from the mountains, dead-broke, with no backing, and I felt
there was no show for me in that shebang. I didn't open my mouth, but I
set myself to get Rocky home, first thing. I had pretty near to drag him
there. When I got him on the street the whiskey he'd drunk went into his
head, and he was like a madman. He wanted to fight me, actually he did,
till I got his gun away from him. He hit me, yes, he struck me with his
fist, till I had to pinion him; luckily I was the stronger man of the
two. I got him back to our room at last, and got him to bed. He just
laid there on his bed like a log and snored. And I laid over there on
mine and cursed. I lay awake all that night thinking. I'd been a brother
to Rocky; I'd saved him time and again before that night; and now he'd
been and given me clean away,--lost me the only good stake I'd ever had
in eight years.

"I was sick. I didn't know what to do. We hadn't even money to pay our
livery-stable and hotel bill. We'd put up at a first-class hotel when
we made our bargain with Colonel Starr, reckoning to pay our account out
of the proceeds of the Last Lap. Now, by selling our cayuses we'd hardly
cover it; so that here we were, fairly busted, afoot, stony-broke, and
winter coming on. Sick was no name for what I felt. It was all to begin
over again, and I was eight years older than when I started out at
prospecting. You bet I felt old that night. Morning came, and I couldn't
eat any breakfast. Rocky was snoring still. I belted on my six-shooter,
stepped over to Frenchy's, and asked for the proprietor. They told me he
wasn't up. It was a tony gambling-house, you know, quite a 'way-up' sort
of place. I sat down and said I could wait. At last they told me he'd
see me. I was shown up into a room. He was there, spick and span, in a
biled shirt and diamond pin, and all that.

"'Sit down,' says he.

"'Thank you,' said I, 'I can stand. I prefer it.' There was a table
between us.

"'Let me warn you,' says he, 'at once, that this room is loopholed, and
that you are now covered with a double-barrelled shot-gun, loaded with
sixteen buckshot in both barrels, at about ten feet off. If you make a
move towards that six-shooter you've brought you'll be filled so full of
lead that your hide wouldn't hold shucks.'

"'All right,' said I, 'I expected as much. I didn't bring this
six-shooter to argue with you.'

"He kind of laughed at that. 'Then what the h----l did you bring it
here for?' says he.

"'To protect myself on the street,' says I; 'to protect myself from
footpads as I go back to my hotel with my money.'

"'What money's that you're talking about?' says he.

"'My money,' says I, 'that you've won off my pardner last night, six
thousand two hundred and fifty dollars in greenbacks. That'll need
protecting.'

"He gave a kind of a grin. 'It's protected by them thirty-two buckshot
at the present moment,' he says, 'and I guess they're good enough to
guarantee it.'

"'I'm not denying it,' says I. 'I've come here, as a gentleman, to
appeal to you as a gentleman, to restore me my money that my pardner's
wrongly handed over to you.'

"He looked amused. 'I notice you don't speak as if you upheld the game
wasn't square,--as if he'd been robbed of it here,' says he.

"'I don't know nothing at all about that,' says I. 'I don't gamble
myself, but I don't doubt your game's a square game enough, as things
go. People say it is. I don't complain of the game; that's Rocky's
business, if it's anybody's. It's my money that I'm talking about,
whether it was a skin game that he lost it over or not. It's those
greenbacks that Colonel Starr paid me that I'm here for.'

"Then he fairly laughed out. 'Why, you galoot,' says he, 'you talk like
a tenderfoot, yet you've been around this Western country long enough to
cut your eye-teeth. When did you ever hear of a professional gambler
giving up the stakes after he'd won 'em?'

"'I don't know as I ever did,' says I; 'but if not, here's the place for
it to begin to happen, right here and now. I tell you I've got to have
that money. I tell you I'm tired. I've prospected in every range of
mountains there is in three Territories to find that Last Lap Lode.
I've been eight years sweating and starving and freezing and wrastling
round. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I got my stake, and
I've got to have it. I tell you again I'm tired. I won't go through it
all again for nothing. I'm either going out of this room with my money
in my pocket, or I'm going out of it feet first, with a hole in my head
you could put your fist through. I don't threaten nobody, but I'll have
my money or I'll die right here.'

"'You say you don't threaten,' says he suspiciously. 'Aint that what
you're saying now--something darned like a bluff?'

"'No,' says I, 'it aint. I don't threaten,' and I turned my right hip
round towards him where I had my pistol slung. 'I'll hold up my hands
and you can take away this pistol if you like,' and I threw up both my
arms over my head.

"'Put down your hands,' says he quietly, 'I don't want to take your
pistol.' There were mirrors all round the room, and as I turned I caught
sight of my face, and though I felt red-hot I could see I was as white
as a sheet, and my eyes like coals of fire. Truth to tell, I was mad.
'Don't take things too hard,' says he, 'it'll come right. I know just
how you feel. I've been busted myself more nor once. Look here, young
man, I've rather taken a liking to you. I'm going to set you going
again. I'll give you a thousand dollars out of my own pocket, and
that'll start you, and all I'll ask is----'

"'You'll give h----l!' I burst out. 'I'm not a beggar! I don't want no
man's charity. I want my money--six thousand two hundred and fifty
dollars in greenbacks--neither more nor less. That's all.'"

Stephens paused. The vividness of his own recollections, excited by the
recital of the incident, had flushed his face and quickened his
breathing. His pipe had gone out, and he signalled to the boy for
another coal to relight it. Manuelita sprang up, ran to the kitchen
hearth, snatched a coal from it, and gave it to the boy to carry in.

Don Nepomuceno, keenly interested, leaned forward with his hands on his
knees. "Yes," he said, "yes. Gambling makes much trouble. I know it, for
I was a great gambler myself. There were four years that I gambled a
great deal, when I was sowing my wild oats." He nodded with the
sententiousness of a reformed character, who yet relished the
reminiscence. "It's a bad thing, very bad. But young men will be young
men. Now, there's my son Andrés, he gambled a great deal too much last
winter. But, look you, I am keeping that young man now out in camp with
the sheep herd, to see after the peons. The lambing season is just
coming on, and they are going off up the Valle Grande, where there is
much green grass. That is far away from the settlements; he can't get
into much trouble up there, can he?" and the father chuckled with
self-satisfaction over his ingenious little manoeuvre. "But here, I am
interrupting you, Don Estevan, and I want to hear the rest of your
story. Please excuse me, and continue."

"Well," resumed Stephens, "the upshot of it was he saw I was in earnest.
So I was. I expected to die right there. If he'd attempted to leave that
room, I'd have jumped him, and then they'd have killed me. I didn't
mind, I was so wound up. He turns to me, and says he, 'I believe I'm
going to do a thing that I never did before, young man. I'm going to
give you back that money that your partner lost of yours.' He went to a
safe he had in the corner, unlocks it, takes out a roll of notes and
brings 'em to the table. 'Jake,' he sung out to his man through the
wall, 'you can put away that shot-gun, it aint needed.'

"He counts out to me the full amount and hands it over.

"'Mr. Frenchy,' says I, 'you're a gentleman. I'll never forget this the
longest day I live.'

"'No more'll I,' says he, with a dry grin on his face. 'The laugh's on
me this time, I think,' he says, 'and I can tell you that aint the case
very often.'

"'I think likely,' says I, getting up to go. 'Good morning, mister; will
you shake hands?'

"'That I will,' says he; and we shook.

"'Look here,' says he, holding me by the hand, 'I want to ask you one
thing more. If you thought you had the best right to this money why
didn't you go to a lawyer and enter suit for it?'

"'Go to a lawyer!' said I; 'what would I do that for? The law in
Montana's a thief; you know it, and everyone knows it.' So it was, Don
Nepomuceno. The head of the ladrones there was the regular, lawful,
elected sheriff of Helena; the road-agents ran the country in fact.

"'No,' says I to Mr. Frenchy, 'I didn't want no lawyer. I heard say you
were a gentleman, and I thought I'd give you a chance to prove it, and
I'm glad I did.'"

Stephens took a few draws at his pipe; the excitement into which he had
worked himself over his story was passing off now the climax was over.

"Well," he resumed, "I went back to my hotel and I woke Rocky. I told
him we must part, and I offered to divide. He wouldn't quite do that,
but he took a thousand dollars off me. He was mighty penitent, but I
told him I'd no use for such a pard any more. I was sick of Montana
altogether, and concluded to skip. I paid my hotel bill, went over to
Frenchy's and made him a present of my cayuse, and I donated over to him
my share in every claim I had located in Montana to compensate him for
what he had lost by giving up the half of Rocky's losings. I believe
he's made a pot of money out of some of those claims since. I took the
stage for Green River City, and then for Denver, and I got through safe
without being held up. I salted down most of my money into Denver real
estate, which pays me a fair interest, and part I've used in paying my
way while I've been prospecting in Southern Colorado and Northern New
Mexico. And that's how I come to be here."

"Thank you, Don Estevan, thank you," said the Mexican. "It is most
interesting; but I wonder you can think of going back to such a
_compañero_. It is a very perilous idea."

"Oh, well," answered Stephens carelessly, as he rose to take his
departure, "meeting him isn't the same thing as going and doubling up
with him again. I'll be apt to know more about that when I see him."

But Manuelita's heart gave a little painful throb at the discovery that
this man, in whom she was fast learning to take an interest too great
for her own peace of mind, could return so lightly to a life that had
already brought him into such dangers, and could depart apparently
without thinking of her, or of what his loss might mean to her. He did
indeed belong to another world.

His mule was brought out and saddled, and his belt once more buckled on,
with the revolver hanging low on his right hip. He warmly grasped Don
Nepomuceno's hand at parting, and with a smile and a bow and his hat
doffed to the ladies, he swung himself into the saddle and rode away.

Don Nepomuceno and his sister stood in the great doorway at the entrance
to the courtyard, looking after his retreating form. He rode with the
long stirrup and erect military seat of one who had seen service in a
United States cavalry regiment, no bad school for horsemanship; his fine
figure and his athletic frame showed off to great advantage. A hundred
yards away, at the bend of the road, he turned in his saddle to wave his
hat once more in a final adieu, and the warm sunlight kissed his
profusion of golden curls. Manuelita ran back into the house that her
aunt might not detect the emotion betrayed by her quivering lip. But the
elder lady had her gaze steadily directed towards the parting guest.
"_Ah, que hombres tan aventureros, si, son estos!_" she said--"What bold
adventurers they are, those men!"

"True indeed," answered her brother, "'tis most true. For myself, I hate
the Americans, most of them, but admire this one, and I like him too.
But he is set on this life of adventure. I sounded him on the matter; I
even hinted to him that it was full time for him to marry and settle
down. But he would none of it."

"_Es hombre muy frio_"--"He is a very cold man"--said the Mexican
woman, and there was a spice of scorn as well as regret in her tone. She
despised a man who was a laggard in love, and her spoken judgment had
coincided with Manuelita's thought.

"It is true, it is most true," assented her brother. "He is cold. These
Americans are not impassioned in the love of women as we are. The chill
of their frozen North is in the very marrow of their bones. They are not
like unto us of Mexico and the South."

Those who know them best will bear witness that, whether they are
descended from Spanish _conquistadores_, from the devoted warriors of
Montezuma, the passionate hearts of the sons and daughters of Mexico
prove them in very truth to be Children of the Sun.




CHAPTER IX

A SQUAW FOR A FEE


All day Felipe remained in the wheat patch. At noon he ate his lunch of
bread and dried flesh down by the river instead of going back to the
pueblo. At intervals during the day he came to the edge of the bank in
order to see that the mare and the remaining mule were all right, and
not trying to get up the bank into the crops. He might have gone off to
talk, for a change to other Indians, who were working in their fields,
but he did not care to. His heart was too sore; he wanted to be alone.
He thought and he thought, but all to no purpose. He ended by saying to
himself, "Well, there's one day more. I'll see Josefa to-night, and
we'll talk it over."

A wild idea floated through his brain of taking one of Don Estevan's
animals without his leave, but he knew it was wild. He believed Don
Estevan would shoot anyone that did so, and he did not mean to incur
that penalty. The only rational scheme he could think of was to run off
in the night to the sierra, find the horse herd next day, get his
father's horse and start back with it, but instead of coming straight to
the pueblo, to lie hid in the foothills of the sierra till night time,
and then slip down and get Josefa to come. But he knew that on the
morrow, when his father missed him, there would be a noise made and he
might be followed, in which case his plan might miscarry, the more so
that his disappearance would cause a doubly sharp watch to be kept on
Josefa. With melancholy eyes he watched the sun sink lower and lower in
the west. Precious time was passing, and he was doing nothing and could
do nothing to bring his will to pass. He burned with desire to act, and
he was helpless.

Before sunset he caught the mare and mule, and took them up to the
pueblo in order to put them in the corral for the night. This was the
time of day when Josefa was likely to be fetching water from the ditch,
which had been empty all the morning on account of the blasting, and in
the hope of meeting her Felipe led them through the street on which her
father's house faced.

And where had Josefa been all this time? She had been hard at work at
home, under the vigilant eye of her step-mother. Grinding corn meal was
the labour which she was set to do, a good steady task to give to a
young person of rebellious disposition. The Indian hand-mill is a large,
smooth stone, something like a flagstone, set sloping in a box on the
floor. The grinding is always done by a woman, who kneels on the ground,
and bending over the mill rubs the corn up and down with a smaller stone
held in both her hands. Hard work it is indeed for back and arms, but
the Pueblo women keep it up for hours. Their good health and fine
physique are largely due to this vigorous exercise.

Josefa worked away over the mill till her back ached, while her
step-mother, at the other end of the room sat at a hand-loom, on which
she was slowly weaving a gorgeous blanket of many colours for the
cacique's next official appearance. Josefa thought as she toiled at her
work; and her mind reviewed over and over again different alternatives.
From the bottom of her heart she hoped that Felipe would be successful
in getting a horse from the American. If he didn't, she did not know
what she should do. One thing only was certain in her mind. Have Ignacio
she would not. They might starve her, and they might beat her, but they
should not force her to be his wife. What was the use of being a woman
of Santiago if she mightn't have some say in the matter? Why should she
be treated as a slave, as the savage Utes treated their women? "I don't
care," she said to herself, and as she said it she stiffened her back,
and rubbed away at the refractory corn harder than ever. "I won't. He's
old, and he's ugly, and I hate him. I know he beat his first wife--he
did. I won't have him."

She glowed with the heat of her scorn and indignation; but all the time
a little unbelieving spirit in the recesses of her mind kept asking in a
sort of undertone, "How will you like being beaten if you disobey? How
will you like it; how will you like it?" And as she cooled off from her
glow, and thought of another side to the picture,--an intercepted
flight, rough seizure, angry words, and furious blows,--she quaked. She
had not been beaten since she was a child, and not much then, for the
Pueblo Indians are good to their little ones; but she knew that her
father was within his rights in giving her to whom he chose, and that
those who broke the laws of the community were liable to the lash. She
had never seen it done severely. All she had seen was two or three cuts
with a whip, administered publicly in the street after a severe scolding
by the marshal of the village, to some misdemeanant who had let his ass
trespass among the standing corn, or who had otherwise broken some of
their simple rules; but she knew with what severity, in private, serious
offences were treated, and in the depths of her brave little heart she
quaked.

But the quaking fit passed off, too, as the indignant glow had done;
perhaps the hard work helped her through. "They can't do more than kill
me," said she to herself. "I can stand it. But have old Ignacio I
won't."

Then she thought of Felipe. She had not much fear for him. His own
father certainly wouldn't beat him. For one thing he couldn't, for the
son was the stronger; and as for Ignacio, she fairly laughed to herself
at the idea of the ugly old fellow attacking Felipe. "Why, Felipe would
put him on the ground in a moment, and keep him there, too, as long as
he wanted," she thought, and felt a grim satisfaction at the idea. The
only danger she feared for him was lest he should get furious and use
his knife, and kill Ignacio, and be hanged for it. But Felipe had
promised her never, never to do such a thing, and he would keep his
word. Such a thing had not happened in the pueblo for forty years--not
since old Fernando was a youth, when he had quarrelled in a fit of
jealousy with another Indian and stabbed him, and had been arrested, and
afterwards pardoned.

Towards evening it was reported that the ditch was running again, and
Josefa and her step-sisters went out to draw water. With the great
earthen jars on their heads, they filled out one after another, and
marched off to the waterside. Here they lowered their burdens to the
ground, and slowly filled them by dipping up cupfuls of water with their
gourds. There were several other women at the waterside doing the same
thing, and there was much animated talk about the blasting of the
acequia--for they had heard the explosions quite distinctly at the
village--and about the improvement of the ditch, which was fuller now
than it had ever been before.

Then some of the younger girls took to playing and splashing each other,
and one said something sly to Josefa about Ignacio. She flushed up and
was on the point of flying into a rage, but calmed herself in a moment,
returned a laughing retort, and joined in the fun and the splashing. Her
step-sisters were surprised, for they well knew her feelings on the
subject of the intended marriage; but they supposed that perhaps she was
growing more reconciled to the idea of it.

At last the welcome interval of fun and gossip came to an end. One by
one the jars, now full and very heavy, were carefully elevated on the
heads of their owners, the party broke up, and the women returned to
their respective homes. Josefa was hoping for the appearance of the
figure she desired to see, and lingered as long as possible; but when
the rest of the party had assumed their burdens she could delay no
longer, and, taking up hers, moved after them, the last of the file.

As they re-entered the village she saw with joy that her manoeuvre had
succeeded. Felipe was strolling very slowly, and apparently quite
unconcerned, up the street, leading the mare and mule towards the
corrals.

They dared not speak, but they had devised a little code of signals of
their own. A shake of the head conveyed to her, "I have failed"; a crook
of the forefinger, "I am coming to-night." An answering crook from her
said to him, "I will meet you"; and they passed on their ways, no one
but themselves the wiser for the little exchange of messages that had
taken place. But Josefa's heart sank lower still as she crossed the
threshold and thought that one of the precious three days was already
gone, and no means of escape was yet provided.

At sunset her father returned. The acequia round the point had been
properly embanked on its lower side, and the stone dislodged by the
blasts cleaned out of its channel. He was in high good humour at the
success of the work, which would render memorable his term of office. He
brought his saddle indoors, and, taking down a key from a sort of shelf
of wickerwork, which was slung by cords from the roof beams, he took his
horse to the stable. He did not keep him at the corrals, where the
prospector kept his mare and mules, but was the proud possessor of a
mud-built stable, with a lock on the door.

His coming set Josefa thinking again. "Our great difficulty," said she
to herself, "is a horse. Why not take my father's? If I could only get
the key we could manage it. I could not indeed get down the saddle and
take it out of the house without making a noise, but Felipe must find a
saddle. And if I can get the key and we take my father's horse, he will
have nothing to pursue us on, which is double reason for taking it."

Filled with this idea, she got some more corn and began to grind again,
so that when her step-mother went into the kitchen to prepare the
evening meal she was left alone in the outer room. Her father came back
from the stable and replaced the key on the shelf, and then went out
again without speaking to her. Now was her chance. She darted silently
across the room, seized the key, and flew back to her work so quickly
that no one in the next room could have suspected what she had done.

She was so bright and cheerful that evening that her family thought she
must have ceased her opposition and become reconciled to the match.
"Ah," said her step-mother, "if Ignacio only gives you work enough, and
doesn't spoil you, he'll have a docile wife as any in the pueblo."

Josefa laughed aloud. "He will have a docile one when he gets me!" she
said. But she laughed to think how blank they would look at daybreak
next morning when they found her flown.

After supper the cacique and the chiefs went in a body to call upon
Stephens. They entered the room and seated themselves against the wall
on the ground, sitting on sheepskins or on mats which they had brought
with them. Stephens passed round the tobacco-bag and some corn husks cut
square for cigarette papers. Presently old Tostado began to speak.

"We are very grateful, and we give you thanks, Sooshiuamo," said he,
"for the work that you have done for us to-day. Ever since the year of
the great eclipse of the sun, which is the most ancient thing the oldest
man of us can remember, the point of rocks has been that which has given
trouble to us all, and our fathers told us it was so when they were
little boys. We have had to be always mending it, and then just when we
had most need of water it always broke. Then you came among us to stay.
You know that we like to live apart from the rest of the world. We do
not like to have strangers come here to live. Our fathers never allowed
it, and they have handed down to us as sacred the command that we
should never allow it either. We have obeyed their command until now,
and never till this day have we proposed to make an exception to our
rule in favour of anybody. The Mexicans, and others who wish, may live
at San Remo, and they may live at Rio Feliz, and at other places in the
world, where they belong, but here, No. It is not our custom. We do not
want it, and we have the right to prevent it. When our fathers made
peace with the old kings of Spain, many generations ago, they had the
right given them for ever to keep all strangers away. It is written in
our grant, and it is a very good law to have. See how in Abiquiu the
Indians let the Mexicans come in, and now they are a sort of mixed
people, and not proper Indians at all. But we are the Indians of
Santiago, and we wish to remain the same. But you came among us, and we
gave you a name, and you lived quietly and did not interfere with
anyone, and we saw that you were good. Then we gave you leave to stop on
and to go and hunt in the mountain the wild cattle, which are the
children of the cattle of the Indians. And you stayed with us all this
winter past, and you have been happy here among us; but now you say that
you must go far away again, following your business. Now we say this:
you have done a thing to-day that we are glad of, and our children will
be glad of, and their children, too, for ever. Now we say this: you live
alone, and life alone is very lonesome. It is good that you should give
up the life of wandering so far and being so lonesome. It is good that
you should live here with us, and we will build you a house, and we will
give you a wife, a young one and a good one, whichever one you please
among the girls, and we will assign you pieces of land of the village,
and you shall have it to cultivate the same as we do. If you do not want
to work with the plough and the hoe yourself, you have money and you can
hire others to work. And you shall live here safe and at ease, and if we
want to do more to the ditch, or to keep the smallpox away, you shall do
it, because you are wise and know the arts of the Americans. We have
talked it over, and that is what we think." And he closed his oration
and folded his blanket about him, not without dignity.

Stephens was sitting on the side of his bed, leaning forward and looking
down, with his pipe in his mouth, when Tostado began his speech. As it
proceeded, he stopped smoking, and still sat looking thoughtfully on the
ground, holding his pipe in his hand, and a curious smile came over his
features.

"People seem determined to make a squawman out of me somehow," he
meditated. "First a lying stage-driver goes and swears to Sam Argles
that I'm one already, and now here comes this worthy Tostado with an
extremely public offer of the pick of the bunch. Well, how am I going to
decline? Shall I say, 'Thanks very much, my good friend, but I'm not
taking any, this time'? Pretend to blush and be embarrassed, and play
the funny man generally? Not much, I guess. My jokes with these people
don't seem to come off. They're not their style. No, I'll just refuse
civilly; but, seeing that they're making themselves so particularly
sweet to me at this moment, I believe I'll trot out my best card and ask
for the mine."

He waited till the applause that followed Tostado's peroration had quite
died away, but instead of rising to make a formal speech in reply, he
remained sitting on the side of the bed.

"I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, Tostado," he began
conversationally, looking at the friendly face of the Turquoise headman,
"and to all of you chiefs here present,"--he cast a comprehensive glance
round the circle,--"for the good opinion you say you have of me, and for
your proposal that I should settle down among you. I take it very kind
of you that you offer me a wife and a home here. But I'm not quite
prepared to settle at present. You said, Tostado, that I had money; so I
have, but only a little, not enough, not as much as I want. Now, I've
got this to say to you. There's just one thing that would induce me to
remain here, and not go away. Don't be startled, it's a very simple
matter; you know that I'm a miner, and live by finding and working
mines. Well, I want you to give me leave to open and work your silver
mine, the silver mine that you have up in the mountains, and that you
keep so carefully hidden. If you'll make a contract with me to do that,
I'll stay on here and work the mine for you. What do you say?"

Never was the admirable facial self-control of the red man better
exemplified than in the reception of this speech. To the Indians the
very name of mines in connection with themselves was a horror. They had
awful traditions of ancient Spanish cruelties, of whole villages
stripped of their young men, who were forcibly carried off to work in a
slavery which was degradation and death. Spanish enterprise in that line
had ceased with the exhaustion of the labour supply, and the
accumulation of water in the shafts which they had no steam-pumps to
remove. But the terror of those evil days lay upon the souls of the red
men. They had hidden those ancient shafts where their forefathers
laboured in the damp, unwholesome darkness, till sickness and misery
found their only respite in death. They guarded the secret of them
jealously, and never with their goodwill should they be reopened.

At the words of the American, the chiefs turned one to another with
looks of astonishment, and acted their little play admirably.

Tostado remained silent, and the cacique was the first to speak.

"Silver mine?" he innocently asked. "What silver mine?" thus ignoring
the fact that the prospector had broached the idea to him already. "_We_
have no silver mine. _We_ know nothing of such things. The Mexicans have
some, far away in the south. The Americans have some, far away there,"
he pointed to the north. "But there never have been any here, never. Is
it not true, my brothers?" He appealed to the circle of chiefs. There
was a chorus of replies: "It is true." "There never have been any."
"None of us ever heard of such things here."

"Nonsense, Salvador," retorted Stephens, laughing as good-humouredly as
he could by way of reassuring the suspicious redskins. "Everybody round
here knows that you fellows have a mine that you keep well covered up so
that nobody shall find it. Very sensible plan that of yours, too. Quite
right not to let other people get hold of it. I allow that. But you're
all wrong about one thing. You're afraid the Spaniards may come back and
force you to work in the mine again. No fear. The Spaniards have gone
for keeps, and the American Government has come, and it's going to stop.
There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of. I've heard of your mine;
now, you let me work it for you; I'll make money out of it for myself
and money for you. The money will buy you lots of cows and sheep and
horses, and improved ploughs and good guns, and all sorts of things. You
say you have got confidence in me, here's your chance to show it."

He might as well have expended his eloquence upon the dead adobe walls.
The chiefs stared at him vacantly. When Stephens ceased there was a
pause, and then Tostado took up the subject.

"It is quite true what you say, Sooshiuamo. You are our friend. The
American Government is our friend; it has protected us from the Mexicans
when they tried to ride roughshod over us, and we are grateful to the
American Government. But the stories about a silver mine are
foolishness. These Mexicans must have been yarning to you; they are idle
talkers. We have no mine. We never had a mine. We don't know anything
about mines, and never did." And again all the chiefs chorused:

"We know nothing of a mine; nothing whatever."

For a whole hour Stephens argued with them. Vain effort. No solid rock
was ever more impenetrable than an Indian who has made up his mind, and
the baffled and wearied prospector gave it up in despair.

His thoughts drifted away to earlier days when he first found himself in
the midst of that wonderful rush to the El Dorado of this century, the
Far Western goldfields. He thought of his hopes, his failures, and his
struggles; how he had always intended "when he had made his pile," to go
back East and marry a nice girl of his own race, and settle down
comfortably. When he had made his pile!--the will-o'-the-wisp that has
led many a man such a weary dance through the sloughs of life. He had to
admit to himself that he had lowered his figure. He had set it at first
at a million, a brownstone front, and a seat in the United States
Senate. It had come down step by step in the last ten years, till it
stood now at ten thousand dollars,--enough to buy a nice little place
back East, and stock it, and have something left on hand; but, alas! he
was not half-way yet even to that goal--and now there was offered him a
mud home, an Indian squaw, and a corn patch. "Not yet, I reckon," said
he to himself, with a grimmer smile than ever. "I've not come to that
quite yet. Not but what these Indians are the honestest and most
virtuous folks to live among that ever I knew. But I can't quite go
turning squawman yet."

"Much obliged to you, Tostado," said he in response to a renewed offer,
"but I don't want to settle down just now. No, thank you. I have
business to see after far away, beyond the country of the Navajos. Not
that I don't like you here. I consider you as my friends. You know that.
Perhaps some other day I may think about settling down, but now I have
other business. But I am much obliged to you, all the same."

"No," said the Indian; "it is we who are obliged to you for what you
have done for us. It is a great thing, and we are grateful to you for
it. There is nothing we would not do for you." And then he went on to
praise and compliment Stephens, and the Americans generally; for he was
no mean proficient in the art of oratory, and enjoyed doing what he knew
he could do well, and what his people admired him for.

Poor Stephens could not escape from the flow of language by quietly
walking off, as he had done in the morning; and though he wanted badly
to get free to finish reading his San Francisco weekly paper, he could
not be so discourteous as to cut the speech short abruptly. But all
things come to an end at last, and finally the chiefs, having made
speeches to their heart's content, took their leave, folded their
blankets around them, and filed off into the moonlight.




CHAPTER X

AN ELOPEMENT


Once again Felipe waited patiently for the setting of the moon, in the
dark corner between the mud oven and the wall where we saw him first.
Thoughts keen almost as sensations chased each other through his mind as
he crouched there watching. Dominant was the feeling of the eternal
sense of need: "I want her and I'll have her." All this trouble, and
strife, and disappointment only made him more obstinate. "I will
succeed," he said to himself. "I will. If I fail now I shall be a loser
all my life--always wanting, never getting. If I win I shall have what I
desire all my life and be happy." This was frank egoism. Felipe's moral
standpoint may be guessed from the fact that had he been told he was
egoistic he would not have understood the implied reproach. To himself
his position was simply natural.

But it would be wrong to suppose that generous and unselfish impulses
did not run side by side with self-regarding ones. He thought of Josefa,
lonely and sad in her father's house. His anger rose as he thought of
the unkindness and the threats she had to endure, and of the heartless
way in which she was being disposed of. He longed to save her from the
present trouble and from the hateful future that threatened her. How
sweet she was and how beautiful! Every fibre in his frame thrilled at
the thought of becoming her protector, at the delicious idea of her
seeking safety in his arms, while he acted as her shield against tyranny
and wrong. And through her sweet eyes there looked out, he knew, the
faithful soul of a true and loving woman. She was good. He felt as sure
of that as he did of his own existence. Her kindness and dutiful spirit
he knew, for he had seen her behaviour in the daily life of the village.
What a shame it was that she should be so ill-treated just because she
was by nature gentle and obedient! Poor girl, she would want to be
comforted a great deal to make up for all the trials she was undergoing
now. He would have to be very good to her in every way, and he swore to
himself that he would be so; he would do his best to make her happy. Ah,
if they could but once get to the padre at Ensenada and be married by
him, it would be all right; and at the thought his pulse beat high.

At last the welcome hand appeared at the hole in the wall he had been
watching so long, and he flew to the spot.

"Is that you, sweetheart?" he whispered as he stretched his hand along
the wall to meet the little fingers. "I always tell myself you will not
come, just to tease myself, for I know all the time that you will. And
at last I see the signal and I know it is all right."

"You know I always do come," she returned, "you bad boy, as soon as I
feel sure they are sound asleep. But now tell me what news you have."

"Bad enough," said he despondently. "I asked the American--I begged hard
of him; but he would not lend me one of his beasts. I waited till he was
in a good temper, after he had blasted the rock; but it was no use. I
will go to-morrow to the sierra for my father's horse and I will come
back for you in the night. He is thin and cannot travel fast, so you
must come early before the moon sets or we shall not have time enough;
but we must take our chance as we can get it. I will tie him away off on
the edge of the mesa, so that there will be no horse tracks for them to
follow close here. You must come afoot so far."

"Stay, Felipe," said she. "I have been thinking. Can you get a
saddle--now--to-night?"

"I can get one of the American's," he said. "He has an old one he never
uses. He would lend me that, I know."

"Yes, but can you go to him to-night, Felipe?"

"Oh, yes," he answered. "I would wake him--he doesn't mind what I do.
But what horse are you thinking of? One of his?"

"No, no," she cried; "I have a better plan than that. We must take my
father's horse. I got the key this evening after he went out. Go first
and get the saddle, and then here is the key."

His fingers tightened eagerly on hers. "You darling!" he whispered. "How
clever you are! Ten times cleverer than I. Why didn't I ever think of
that before? Wait. I'll be back in a moment." He gave her hand one more
rapturous pressure, and loosing it, darted off like the wind to
Stephens's house.

Stephens was a sound sleeper, but in the middle of the night he was
waked by a sudden angry growl from Faro. He opened his eyes, but it was
pitch-dark. A low knock was heard at the door. "Who is it?" he cried,
first in English, then in Spanish.

A voice answered, likewise in Spanish. "Oh, Don Estevan, it's me,
Felipe."

"Felipe!" he exclaimed. "Why, what the mischief are you up to now? But
come in, the door isn't locked."

He heard the latch pulled, and seized the collar of Faro, who was
snarling savagely. The door opened and the cool night air blew freshly
in. A figure was dimly seen in the starlight. Felipe approached the bed.
"Oh, Don Estevan!" he began at once, "do be kind to me; lend me your
saddle--the old saddle, not the good one. You know the old one hanging
on the wall in there."

"Why, what's up, Felipe?" said Stephens, surprised at being roused by
this request in the middle of the night. "What do you want with it? What
makes you come bothering me now?"

"Oh, please don't be angry, but lend it me," pleaded the boy. "I will
bring it you back, and I know you don't want it; you never use it."

"What mischief are you after?" said Stephens. "You want to go off
sweethearting somewhere--that's what it is, you young rascal. That's
what you wanted my mare for to-day. I know what you are up to."

"Oh, Don Estevan," begged the boy,--"the saddle, please. If you won't
lend it to me, sell it to me. I have money,--five dollars."

"Hold on till I strike a light, and shut the door, will you?" said
Stephens. "Lie down, Faro, and be quiet." The prospector got out of bed,
struck a match, and lit a candle. "You're a pretty sort of fellow, to
come roaming around this time of night!" he went on as, candle in hand,
he stepped cautiously across the floor in his bare feet to the door of
the inner room, which he unlocked. "Sensible people are in bed and
asleep at this time of night," he grumbled. "Come in here and get your
saddle."

Felipe followed him instantly to the storeroom where he kept his
powder-keg, mining-tools, pack-saddles, and provisions.

"There it is," said Stephens, pointing to an old saddle hanging by one
stirrup from a peg in the wall. "Get it down. And the bridle; yes,
that's it"--and the pair emerged again into the outer room.

Stephens locked the door again, and turning round encountered Felipe's
hand with a five-dollar bill in it. "Here it is, Don Estevan; five
dollars," said the young Indian.

"Tut, tut, I don't want your money," said the American cheerfully. "Keep
it or give to your sweetheart to keep for you. She'll do that fast
enough"--and he chuckled at his own wit. "Now don't you smash that
saddle," he continued; "and mind you bring it back when you've done with
it."

"Oh, thank you, Don Estevan, a thousand times!" cried the young Indian.
"God will reward you for it."

"Likely story," growled his employer, "when I guess it's the devil's
business you're riding on. There, that'll do; be off with you," he
added; and he escorted Felipe, still protesting his gratitude, to the
door.

As the boy stepped outside, Stephens asked through the half-shut door,
"Who's going to look after my stock to-morrow?"

"Oh, Don Estevan, my brother, my little brother Tomas. He will see to
them. I have told him."

"Much good he'll be!" retorted the Californian. "Whom did I hire, him or
you?"

"Why, me, Don Estevan, but my little brother will----"

"Yes, your little brother will play the mischief," said Stephens,
cutting him short. "I know you. There, get along with you. I'm tired of
you,"--and the sarcastic prospector turned growling to his blankets
again. "Who is she? for there's some woman at the bottom of it, as sure
as fate," said he to himself as he turned over on his bed before going
to sleep. "One of the young squaws I suppose. Felipe used to be a pretty
good sort of a boy, but durn my skin if I don't believe he's going to
turn out just as ornery as the rest of 'em. Who is she, I wonder,
anyway?" He was just dropping off to sleep when the thought struck him,
"Maybe he's gone to the corral to get the mare!" He half rose at the
idea, but lay down again, soliloquising slowly, "No, he never would have
come here to borrow the saddle if that had been his game; he dursn't.
I'd break every bone in his confounded young carcass if he dared do such
a thing"; and comforting himself with this hypothetical revenge, he
finally dropped asleep.

With the saddle safely tucked into the fold of his blanket, Felipe flew
round the corner and down the street to the back of the cacique's house.
When he came to the place he stooped down and picking up a tiny pebble
he tossed it through the hole. Josefa was waiting inside and answered
his signal instantly.

"Have you got the sad

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