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Title: Red Mesa
A tale of the southwest
Author: Warren H. Miller
Release date: March 28, 2024 [eBook #73274]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: D. Appleton and Company, 1923
Credits: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED MESA ***
RED MESA
[Illustration: NILTCI GOT ONE GLIMPSE OF VASQUEZ, STANDING WITH HIS
RIFLE POISED.]
RED MESA
A TALE OF THE SOUTHWEST
BY
WARREN H. MILLER
AUTHOR OF
“THE BLACK PANTHER OF THE NAVAHO,”
“THE RING-NECKED GRIZZLY,” ETC.
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: 1923 :: LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CAÑON HONANKI 1
II. THE LURE OF THE MINE 25
III. VASQUEZ 47
IV. PINACATE 70
V. RED MESA 95
VI. THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN 119
VII. BLAZE 143
VIII. HANO 166
IX. THE SUN DANCE 187
X. THE DEFENSE OF RED MESA 208
XI. GOLD VERSUS NATURE 226
XII. OUT OF THE DESERT 244
RED MESA
CHAPTER I
CAÑON HONANKI
Above a timbered valley in the southwest rises a towering wall of
gorgeous cliffs such as only Arizona can produce. Their rock pinnacles
are banded with color--red strata, ochre, blue, green, and white--all
in wavy horizontal lines like layer cake. These long walls were scoured
clean and smooth long ago by prehistoric water action. They were broken
with deep fissures--fissures that now cleave the cliff from top to
bottom--“chimneys” that mean seven hundred feet of sheer ascent to him
who would dare scale these heights.
Two riders sat gazing up, searching this cliff face, while an Airedale
dog of huge and leonine aspect prowled about in the creek bottom near
them, investigating this and that with snuffing nose.
“That cliff dwelling is up here somewhere, according to Doctor Fewkes’
map, John,” said the smaller and rangier of the pair, his puckered-up
black eyes never leaving off their scrutiny of the cliff face. “Think
we’ll find her?”
The older man, a great, bony and leathery cowman, who might have
hailed from anywhere in the west from Montana to Arizona, took off his
sombrero and mopped a sweaty brow with the loose end of his bandanna.
“Search me!” he grinned. “I’m a cowman, not no prophet--as the
greenhorn axman said when the lumber boss as’t him which way his tree
was goin’ to fall.” He looked lugubriously up at the cliff, shaking his
head solemnly. “It’d take a horned toad with suckers on his feet to
bust her, Siddy son.”
The youth tugged determinedly at the fine fuzz of black mustache that
adorned his upper lip. “Honanki Ruins or bust--that’s our motto, John!”
he retorted, his black eyes twinkling merrily at the reluctant cowman.
“Here’s Fewkes’ map, with the ruins marked ‘Inaccessible’ on it, and,
by jerry, _we’re_ here, if the map’s right. They’re somewhere above us,
and it’s up to us to bust ’em.”
“Yaas,” said Big John, shifting his weight to the nigh stirrup to give
the white horse under him a change of load. “Somethin’ hed orter be
done about it, thet’s shore! _You_ mosey up--an’ I’ll hold yore hoss!”
All of which preliminaries usually meant that Big John really meant
to take the lead in climbing himself once the ruins were found. Sid
knew that all this feigned reluctance about climbing cliffs was mere
camouflage on Big John’s part. He urged his pinto across the cañon so
as to get a better view of the cliff face. He wanted to size up that
cañon wall first, for he knew that the only way to keep Big John off
that cliff was to tie him down, which “ain’t done.” The two had been
boon comrades for a long time; first up in Montana on the hunt for the
Ring-Necked Grizzly, later in the Cañon de Chelly region where the
Black Panther of the Navaho had met his end. That expedition had been
Sid’s start in practical ethnology. Now they were down in the White
River reservation of the Apache, seeking out ruins that had been noted
by Dr. Fewkes of the Smithsonian but had been left unexplored for lack
of time and facilities.
“There it is!” rang out the youth’s voice excitedly from across Cañon
Honanki (Bear Cañon). “Come over here, John!”
The huge cowman trotted his white mustang over to where Sid had halted
his pinto under a big western pine. Far up, at least three hundred
feet above the floor of the valley, they saw holes like swallow’s
nests pierced in the cliff at irregular intervals. They seemed small
and round and black as ink, and near them were carved on the rock odd
circular spirals, lightning zigzags, primitive horses, apparently all
legs, and geometrical armed-and-legged designs intended to represent
men. Ragged holes further along on the cliff face showed that galleries
and passageways ran in behind the living rock up there. These natural
caves, common enough in Arizona, had been scoured out by water action
in geologic times.
But it was a fearful place for human beings to attempt to climb to!
Tall perpendicular folds in the cliff face cast their black shadows on
the surrounding stone, the cracks beginning and ending nowhere. There
were impracticable clefts, ledges that shaded off to flat precipice
faces, dents and scoriations not over two feet deep, yet they seemed to
be all the footholds for climbing that the place afforded.
“Gorry!--a cavate dwelling!” whooped Sid, overjoyed. “The kind that is
built in the solid rock instead of being made of stone slabs, John,”
he explained with the ethnologist’s enthusiasm.
Big John grinned. “Gawsh!” he exploded. “I s’pose that humans once
tried to live in such places--but eagles would know better! Nawthin’ll
do but we gotto bust her, eh?”
“Yep,” said Sid confidently. “A shaman or a pueblo priest lived up
there once. Sort of hermit, you know. Holy man. If that old scout
_lived_ there we ought to be able to climb up _once_.--What think?”
“He didn’t come pilgriming down to shoot up the gulch _muy_ plentiful,
I’m bettin’!” averred Big John sardonically. “I’ll tell ye, Sid; thar’s
only one way to bust her, and that’s to make a string of long ladders,
same as _he_ done. You don’t get me off this hoss on no fly-creepin’
climb without a-doin’ jest that--savvy?”
“Oh, thunder!” exclaimed Sid impatiently. “It’d take two days of
perishing work. Le’s try to get up this cleft here.” He pointed to the
beginnings of a practical ascent.
“No!” barked Big John, and his tone was final. “The Colonel, yore
pappy, he’d stake me out an’ build a fire on me tummy ef I let ye do
any sech thing. Thet halter’s still waitin’ for you, Sid, I’ll admit,
to save having it proved on me, but I ain’t aimin’ to cheat your
friends out of their necktie party none. We camps right here an’ does
the job proper, sabe, lil’ hombre?”
Sid acquiesced, after a little further study of the cliff. There was a
tall vertical cleft that led up to the swallow’s nest holes by a series
of breaks and rises. It was easy to reconstruct the old shaman’s route
by imagining the proper ladders set up so as to negotiate a number of
these vertical rises. They could be made of slender lodgepole pine,
with the branches left on for steps in place of the heavier logs with
notched steps which the aborigines had used. And not over half a dozen
of them would be needed altogether. It was worth doing, to “bust” an
“Inaccessible.”
Making camp in that rainless country was a simple matter. Sid simply
selected a pleasant site on a knoll down the cañon overlooking the
brook under a canopy of huge pines, while Big John unsaddled both
horses and took them to the nearest grass plot, staking them out and
leaving Blaze, his Airedale, on guard. The dog had been a present from
Colonel Colvin after the Black Panther trip. He had the noted sagacity
of his breed, and with a year’s hunting experience with Ruler, the
giant coonhound of that expedition, had become a most devoted and
dependable “pardner” on all their hunts. After merely piling the
sleeping and cooking gear and hanging up their food bags above the
rodent zone, Sid was ready to go ladder cutting.
The White Mountain region is pine forest, sparsely timbered, the trees
not crowded or packed so densely as in eastern forest growth. As a
result, the mountains, which resemble much the rounded and rolling
Alleghanies of the east, seem stippled with individual trees instead
of banked in mossy green as with closely growing timber. In the river
valleys, however, there are thickets as dense as in any well watered
clime, so Sid lost no time in getting into such a pine grove armed with
his light belt ax. That light, little long-handled ax of his was far
more efficient than any sort of hatchet. It would drop a four-inch pole
thirty feet high almost as quickly as a full ax.
Before the first tree crashed down Big John had joined him.
“This here _Pinus Contorta_ (sounds like Julius Seizher only it ain’t)
is the boy that will bust her quick, Siddy boy,” he laughed, rolling up
his sleeves and baring a forearm like a lean ham. “You give a leetle
feller like me elbowroom!” He took a full ax in one fist and smote a
tree with it like chopping with a hatchet. About two judgmatical cuts
sufficed to send it crashing down, whereat the giant cowman started
after another. Sid saw that he would have his hands full just trimming
the felled ones so he went for their boughs with his small ax.
“You cut off them tops whar’ there’s somethin’ substantial to it, Sid,”
rang out Big John’s voice from the timber as he sent another pine
tumbling about the youth’s ears. “Remember that I weigh a pound or two
more’n a straw hat, son!”
“Help me put up this first one, now, John, she’s ready,” announced Sid,
struggling to lift the trunk clear of the underbrush. Big John came
over and heaved the whole tree unceremoniously up on his shoulder. With
Sid guiding the lean end they made for the cliff. Pushing and panting
they up-ended it and stood it ladderwise in a vertical fissure which
gave on a ledge above. Sid swarmed up the short branch stubs, climbed
out on the ledge, and waved his arms down to Big John below.
“Looks like one of us’d have to shinny up and haul the next one with a
lariat,” he called down.
“Son, I got an idee--ef she don’t get away while I’m picketin’ her
down,” said Big John. “You git up thar and hang my lariat honda over
that point of rock, sabe, an’ then we’ll run yore lariat through the
honda and snake up the next pole by one of the hosses.”
He got both lariats up from camp while Sid waited. Presently he
returned, to cast it up with the sure whirling pitch of the born rope
artist. Sid snatched it in and hauled his own up by the end of the
other. Then he coiled both, attached them to his belt and started up
the next cleft. The very pockets in the rock where feet of the ancient
log ladders used to rest were easy to pick out as he climbed. What men
had done a man could do! By the time he had everything fixed and the
honda, or brass eye of the lariat, hung with the other rove through it,
Big John was below with a horse and a fresh pole. It came snaking up as
the cowman led the horse away, hauling on the lower end by the lariat
tied to a cinch strap above the pony’s back.
Sid set the pole and climbed higher to the next ledge so that they
could repeat the maneuver with a third pole. This was the limit for
that horse-hoisting stunt, however, for he was now up over eighty feet
and there was not rope enough in camp to double through the next honda.
Big John yelled up as he tied on the fourth pole and then he led the
horse back to graze again.
In a few minutes Sid saw him climbing up below him. He had no fear
of height himself. That all belongs to the tenderfoot aloft for the
first time. It attacks man in a sickening sort of stage fright at
first, whether on cliff, high building, or the upper rigging of a ship.
After a time familiarity wears it off and in its place there comes
a cheerfulness over the immense outlook, the height and the distant
scenery of it all; a joyous sense of freedom that must be part of the
bird’s outlook on life. He waited for Big John on the ledge, looking
about him interestedly. It was narrow but not dangerous up here. An
old woman might have wanted a rail fence or something, he thought, but
things were done on such a huge scale on this cliff that this very
ledge that looked from below like a mere trace proved up here to be
nearly three feet wide. Plenty!--Thousands! as the facetious Big John
would have said.
Presently that cheerful son of Montana arrived, breathing heavily but
entirely at ease. “Waal, son, it ain’t goin’ to freeze up an’ snow
on our scheme jest yit! Tail on to this yere lariat and we’ll yank up
another pole.”
They hauled away on the long rope which the cowman had tied to the
butt of the fourth pole while down there. It weighed perhaps fifty
pounds--nothing at all to mountain men! After a period of grunting
effort the butt end came up over the ledge and the pole was gathered
in and laid lengthwise. They then started on to prospect for the next
fissure.
“Gosh durn it, how come, son? Hyar be stone steps leadin’ up back hyar,
or you can steal my hoss!” came back Big John’s voice in the lead as
they rounded the face of the huge pinnacle of rock. Sid hurried to
catch up. That simplified matters a whole lot!
“Look yonder, John!” he cried excitedly, as they climbed up the row of
stone pockets, “one more pole finishes us! See that hole in the wall
across the crevasse?”
“Sho’ I do! But Sid, you ought to show some respect for the naked
truth, son--which-same means we’re _busted_! Yore hole’s across a
no-bottomed chasm, hombre, an’ we ain’t flies nor yit eagles, nohow!”
Sid climbed more notched steps that led up over a smooth billow of rock
and then eyed the hole opposite, measuring the distance carefully.
Here, evidently, began those scoured-out caves and tunnels in the
living rock which led up to the cavate dwelling. There had been a log
bridge across here once, but it had long since rotted through and
perished.
“Let’s drop our fourth pole across and then, we’ve got her,
John--that’s the answer!” declared Sid.
Big John shook his head solemnly. “Ef she breaks an’ lets this gent
down, they ain’t goin’ to be no come-back, that’s sartain! No sir,
nawthin’ stirring!”
“Oh, shucks--where’s that pole, John? Le’s get her up here and let her
fall over anyhow!” exclaimed Sid hopefully. “Maybe we can hit the hole
opposite with its other end.”
“I’ll try that much,” agreed Big John. “I ain’t purty but I’m shore
strong--as the bohunk said when they as’t him to tote a saw log.” And
without more ado he retraced his steps and picked up the pole. With it
on his shoulder he came teetering along the ledge.
“Thar, Sid--miss an’ out! We got jest one shot,” he grunted, standing
the pole up and aiming its fall carefully.
“Wait!” shouted Sid. “Tie the lariat to the middle of it! You’ll feel
better if you’ve got that to keep her from breaking,” he suggested.
“Center shot, son; plumb center! Shore you got almost human
intelligence!” grinned Big John, lowering the pole again. Sid seemed
to have an even better idea than that, now. He coiled the lariat and
cast it up, to fall around a rock pinnacle above them. Then he tied
its other end near the center of the pole and they let it fall slowly,
paying out rope while Big John guided it by main strength until its
other end rested square in the jagged black pit of the cave across the
chasm from where they were standing.
“Ain’t afraid of nawthin’, now, with that good old rawhide lariat
holdin’ her up,” declared Big John, beginning to climb across. Sid
followed him, once the heavy bulk of the cowman had left the pole on
the other side. Below him dropped away an endless shadowy chasm, with
the tiny pines and firs of the valley visible hot in the sunlight far
below. On both sides towered above him the huge smooth walls of the
chimney made by the pinnacle and its neighbors. Sid cast a mere glance
at the prospect below, and then climbed over swiftly and joined Big
John in the black depths of the tunnel.
It was some time before their eyes became accustomed to the dim light.
Up and up inside the living rock the narrow fissure climbed. Old steps,
cut in the rock or built of flat stone slabs, guided them. Here and
there light was let in by those irregular ragged holes in the cliff
wall which they had seen from below.
“No one but a shaman would live here,” declared Sid, speaking
ethnologically; “a basket of corn, some dried meat and a string of
peppers would last him a whole season. But there’s water up here
somewhere.”
“Hed orter be!” said Big John laconically. “This place’s as dry as the
professor’s book, whar the dust flewed out of the pages when you opened
it. Besides, that Indian’d grow a beard a mile long while he’s jest
gittin’ down out’n hyar fer a drink!”
There _was_ water up there. After a long climb, when their aching knees
positively refused to lift for another step, they came to a little
basin hollowed out of the rock by human hands. A thin trace of water
came weeping down from somewhere in the interior here, to lose itself
and evaporate on the outside cliff face. A spruce growing out of the
crevice, which they could see through the next window, showed that all
that water was being preëmpted by just that one tree. A spruce seed had
found it somehow. Nature leaves nothing unutilized.
A blaze of light now lit up the chasm ahead. The gallery in the rock
became more open and led upward to a wide door cut out of the rock.
Here the shaman of long ago had looked out on the frailties and
follies of the world below him, serene, indifferent, meditating on the
destinies of his people. Those times surely needed one wise man to sit
apart and do the thinking for them all, for in this pueblo country the
hostile and warlike Apaches had been fearsome invaders even before
the time of the Spaniards. How long before that they and the Navaho
had come down from the far north no man knows. But they found the
peaceful and sedentary pueblo Indians an easy prey, and gradually they
drove them all out of these cliff dwellings in the mountains to build
themselves defensive villages on the high mesas of the Painted Desert
to the north.
Sid and Big John stopped at that natural doorway to look out below.
Cañon Honanki lay a green-spired paradise below them. Bare, barren
cliffs, streaked with color, rose opposite. A short way down the valley
the horses could be picked out grazing placidly. The watchful Blaze
lay near them and he rose and barked at sight of his master, his faint
volleys echoing up the cliffs.
“Now for Mr. Inaccessible--the cavate dwelling!” exclaimed Sid
triumphantly. He led on upward until he came to a low door built in a
stone wall laid up without mortar. Entering it, they saw that a round
window cut through the cliff stone lit up the small cave room. Baskets,
finely woven, of a texture and quality seldom seen nowadays, greeted
Sid’s delighted eyes. There were shallow marriage and ceremonial
baskets; bottle-shaped ones waterproofed with piñon gum, the kind now
called _tus_ and used in medicine dances; large granary baskets still
filled with dry kernels of blue, black, red, and white corn. A few
black pottery jars, decorated with white lightning zigzags, stood in
the corners. Strings of corn ears, red peppers, and dried onions, all
musty and shriveled, hung from poles let into the roof of the cave.
“The old bird was a rain-maker, all right,” said Big John, pointing
irreverently at the zigzags on the jars and baskets. “Claimed he
invented the lightning, all-same as Benjamin Franklin.”
But Sid did not answer. Instead his eyes were riveted in sheer
astonishment on the smooth rock wall of the cave, and he grabbed Big
John’s sleeve and pointed, speechless with wonder.
“Gorry!--Look there, John!” he finally found breath to exclaim. “Here
is the _last_ place a fellow would expect to see the writing of a white
man, I’ll say!”
“Well, I’ll be durned!” growled Big John, peering at the letters with
Sid.
Written on the wall, in red earth letters and still as bright as the
day they were made, was--a name! a Spanish name!
FRA PEDRO DEL VACAS, 1680.
“Can you beat it!” cried Sid, breathlessly. “Gorry, what a find!--Le’s
see, John,” he went on excitedly, “1680 was the year of the big
massacre, wasn’t it?”
“Search me!” said Big John whimsically. “All I know about them
greasers is that you shore don’t have to oil yore bullets none to slip
’em through their feathers.”
“Sure it was 1680!” continued Sid, ignoring Big John’s observation upon
our Mexican neighbors. “That year all the tribes rose against their
Spanish friars. Most of them were murdered or martyred--especially
those that the Apaches got hold of. This Fra came up here to the old
shaman for refuge. _Why_ did he write that inscription then? Because
he was dying, of course! Escaped from the Apaches somehow, wounded
perhaps, and was carried up here by the pueblo people. The Spanish
missionaries did not carve their initials on every rock. He left his
name for the next missionary to find, if ever one should visit this
pueblo again. It means something, John. We’ll look for pueblo graves,
next, and maybe get some more light on it.”
Sid’s idea of searching for graves might seem astounding to any one but
an ethnologist. But the richest prehistoric relics are always obtained
from exhumed graves, usually located near some shaman’s cave. The body
was always mummied, and with it were buried most of the pueblo Indian’s
possessions. Here the early cotton blankets, yucca sandals, baskets,
pottery, and weapons are found in a tolerable state of preservation,
and they all show that the prehistoric pueblo dwellers lived very much
as their descendants do to-day.
Big John was used to Sid’s intense enthusiasms in ethnological matters
and was accustomed to following him around--to see that he “didn’t
break his fool neck an’ so cheat that rope that’s waitin’ fer him” as
he always put it. He bent his tall frame in pursuit as Sid dodged out
of the house and darted for a deep and dusty grotto that lay behind it.
A huge horizontal fissure, not over four feet high, had been worn out
here by the waters, undermining the cliffs above for a considerable
distance. A stratum of mud, long since dried to dust, covered the floor
of the fissure. Closely dotted over it were slabs of stone, under each
of which one would find a small stone kiva or dry well. The mummy
would be discovered sitting upright in it, swathed about with cotton
blanketing made long before the first wool from the first sheep that
gave it was stolen from the Spaniards by the Navaho. Generally also the
mummy was covered with ceremonial basketry. But Sid passed them all
by, for the present. What he was searching for now was a white man’s
grave. And, far back under the rock he found it, a long mound with a
rude cross set in the dust at its head. A single flat stone lay across
the center of the mound.
Raising it, the persistent Indian burial customs proved to have been
still adhered to. A long black robe, with a ghastly skull peeping from
the cowl, lay flat on the bottom of the niche, which was a sort of
stone coffin, its sides lined with stone slabs built in shallow walls
precisely like the Indian rivas. The top was roofed over with stone, on
which the earth had been mounded up as the white priest had evidently
directed it should be. There was nothing else in the grave. Nothing,
that is, but a _flat slab of pottery_, lying across the dead friar’s
chest!
Its square shape at once attracted Sid as unusual and not Indian. He
picked it up with queer thrills running all through him. A message from
that white man of long ago! For there was writing graven on the clay,
and the three letters “D. O. M.” stood at the head of the plaque.
“A Dominican friar, he was, John,” said Sid, reverently. He began to
read aloud the sonorous Latin written on the plaque, conjuring up his
forgotten Cæsar of high-school days.
“What’s that stuff, huh?” inquired Big John. “Sounds like spig talk,
but ’tain’t. I’m a hundred per cent American, Sid, I am, an’ I don’t
like it,” he growled, shaking his head sturdily.
“Can’t make it out myself,” confessed Sid, after reading it a little
farther. He found that he had forgotten his Latin so much that merely
to pronounce the words was an effort. “Here’s a few that I _do_
know, though, John: ‘_Aurum et Argentum_,’ that’s gold and silver;
‘_Pinacate_,’ ‘_Sonoyta_,’ those are places; ‘_Papagoii_’, the
Papagoes; ‘_Mesa Rubra_’ that’s Red Mesa----”
“Never heard tell of it,” declared Big John, promptly. “Thar’s a red
mesa up Zuñi way, but there’s no gold or silver thar; an’ Pinacate is
a long thirsty ride down over the lava country into Mexico. Ain’t no
mesas in that country nohow. She’s all red lava saw-teeth an’ spiny
choyas--if you asks me.”
“It’s an old Spanish _mine_--that’s what the plaque’s all about!”
shouted Sid, excitedly. “Some of the Papagoes must have told this old
fra about a gold and silver mine, located in Red Mesa down Pinacate
way--say, Scotty will have to hear of this John!” whooped Sid, carried
away by the enthusiasm of the moment.
Big John shook his head solemnly: “Son, folks has died of thirst _in
thousands_, chasing lost Spanish mines in that country! Santa Fé’s full
of old priest reports like this-yer. The Indians shore did stuff ’em
with gauzy tales! Thar’s mineral down thar, I’ll ’low; but after ye
find it, what ye got? Reminds me of the recipe for cookin’ a fish-duck.
Ye take an’ soaks him in three kinds of soup; bile him four days; stuff
him with an apple an’ a onion; tie a bunch of celery ’round his neck,
wrap him in a couple of slabs of bacon; stick in a hunk of garlic; add
salt, pepper, and a bottle of wine; bake him three hours--an’ presto,
the gosh-darn fish-duck is gone! That’s how a feller feels when he
finds a mine in that country, Sid; ye cayn’t git the miner’l out nohow!”
Sid’s laughter pealed out. “Well, we’ll hunt up old Scotty just the
same and then go get some one to translate this Latin. Scotty’ll just
go crazy over this tablet, and he needs the money, John. We can come
back here for the Indian relics some other time. Scotty and Niltci are
prospecting down in the Santa Catalinas for mineral, right now, you
know----”
“An’ they won’t find nawthin’ down thar thet ain’t been found long ago,
jest as I told him,” interjected Big John.
“Sure! We’ll ride down there and give him this tablet. It will be a
life-saver for old Scotty! Red Mesa or bust! John--how’s that for a new
motto?”
“Looks handsome, but she ain’t edible,” said Big John, enigmatically.
But Sid just couldn’t get over his enthusiasm for his chum Scotty’s
sake about this Latin tablet. What a find for good old Les! That
mine would be his big chance! Friendship was sweet; to be able to
do something for a chum was keen pleasure. He sat down and went on
studying over the tablet, balking at strange Latin words, digging up
more of them out of his memories of his school Cæsar. The old pottery
plaque fascinated him. He kept speculating about it, how it came to be
made, where the old fra had got his information about the mine. What an
ancient old story this was!
“This fra used to live with the cavate dwellers here, John, I tell
you! He made this plaque and had them fire it when they baked their
own pottery. Imperishable record, you see. It’s a real find, I tell
you! One of those lost Spanish mines that really _is_ so! ‘_In regione
Papagoii_’ that’s the Papago country of Pinacate, all right. ‘_XXI
milia S-O ab Pinacate_’ plain as shootin’, twenty-one miles northeast
from Pinacate, ‘_Mesa Rubra_’--there’s a hill that looks like a red
mesa down there--that’s the dope! Gee! What a start for good old
Scotty! Le’s go! We’ll ride straight for his camp in the Catalinas!”
Big John grinned saturnine grins as he deposited the pottery plaque in
the small rucksack without which he never left his horse. Then he got
up and followed the eager Sid down the long, dark ascent of steps up
which they had come.
CHAPTER II
THE LURE OF THE MINE
“It’s panning out mighty low-grade stuff!--Dog-gone it!”
The young man who made this ejaculation, and in a most discouraged
tone, too, was slender and wiry, with sandy reddish hair surmounting
a Scotch cast of features. His face was freckled and sunburned. The
inextinguishable hope of youth still flickered in his blue eyes,
but there was worry, anxiety, there, too--the sign of that nagging,
cankering care that keeps a fellow thin.
He shook his head as he held up a test tube in its wooden holder to the
sunlight.
“Won’t do!” he muttered. “Anybody can find _a_ mine in Arizona--but few
can find a paying one.”
He looked about him at the silent and colorful mountains surrounding
him, hopeless misery in his eyes. They had no answer for him! The
brush sunshade that he and the Indian boy who was his companion had
established was Scotty Henderson’s base camp for mine prospecting.
Our readers may have met him before--on the trip for the Ring-necked
Grizzly in Montana or when after the Black Panther of the Painted
Desert country of Arizona.
Leslie Henderson--Scotty’s real name--had a heavy load to carry, for a
youth of nineteen. It weighed nothing physically but mentally it was
a burden far beyond his years. And the letter from his mother that
he was now carrying in a hip pocket of his riding breeches had added
a sickening load upon a mind already worn with anxiety. It had told
him, as gently and self-sacrificingly as possible, of his mother’s
decision to sell the old Henderson place back east. The cost of living
had gradually come to exceed Major Henderson’s pension, which was all
the Great War had left them of his father, the good old Doctor. To a
woman used to comforts and a roof over her head as a matter of course,
to say nothing of the ancestral associations of that homestead, that
decision of Scotty’s mother was a far heavier blow to her than her
words would admit. Delicately put, it meant in plain words that Scotty
would either have to strike a paying mine claim _soon_ or else give up
his heritage of independence, that heritage that every real man claims
as his birthright, and take a position somewhere in some great mining
corporation. And the outlook was pretty black, now.
“No go, Niltci!” groaned Scotty, emptying the green fluid in the test
tube with a gesture of discouragement, “we’ll have to break camp and
move on.”
With that decision the hopelessness of all this endless prospecting
surged over Scotty in an overwhelming wave. Arizona had been combed all
over for mines! There was plenty of this sort of thing, this scanty and
scattered deposit of copper carbonate, poor in per cent of metal, all
through its mountains. The real thing was far different. Not impossible
to locate; for each year, even now, sees some new and fabulous lode
opened up. But the scattered, thin deposit of this gulch would take
a mountain railroad to develop it and the most expensive of electric
process works to reduce it to metal. Take this ore back east and men
could make money out of it, but that “take,” that train-haul which
would cost more than the ore was worth, was the rub!
For a moment a gorgeous vista of temptation opened up before Scotty.
All he really needed to do to become rich was to go east with some of
these picked specimens and float a “paper” copper mine, the kind that
robs thousands of poor people of their earnings by false and visionary
“literature”; that were never intended to do more than line the pockets
of those scoundrels who make their living cheating the public that way.
But the mute reproach of the silent mountains to that temptation was
enough for Scotty. Even the poor prospector with burro and pick who
had come this way before had been too honest for that! He, some one of
him, had without doubt explored this very valley long before Scotty; he
had looked over this ore and gone on, knowing well that in practice it
would never pay.
“Nothing doing!” said Scotty to himself, his honest soul recoiling in
horror before the gilded prospect of a wildcat mine floated back east.
“But, while there’s life there’s dope!” he grinned. “Where next? Dashed
if I know! Le’s break camp anyhow, Niltci.”
The Indian youth grunted inquiringly from where he squatted, with the
stoic patience of the Indian, under their brush shade. He pointed a
coppery finger out at a lariat rope stretched between two mesquites in
the sunlight of the hill slope. On it hung a ragged collection of meat
strips, like stockings on a clothesline. They still glistened, raw and
red, in the hot blaze of the cloudless sky overhead.
“_Charqui_ no done,” he demurred, shaking his head. “Three sleeps yet.”
He was referring to their store of dried venison; “jerky” as the
cowmen call it, only he used the original Spanish name for it,
_charqui_--dried meat.
“Gee, I’d forgot about our grub stake! Hope,” observed Scotty, “springs
infernal in the human breast, Niltci! Grub’s our real problem, now.
Let’s let the mine wait and play hunters a bit, eh?”
As if to answer him the musical notes of a hound belled down from a
distant mountain flank. There was sparse, dry-soil timber all over
these hills, piñon, spruce, stunted western yellow pine and the
inevitable aspens. The hills were bare and bony, and they blazed with
orange and lavender color, for it was November, but there was game in
the valley timber, lots of it, deer, cougar, bobcat, and an occasional
cinnamon bear. Wild turkey inhabited the depths of the cañons, so
plentiful that they formed the daily fresh meat of their camp in
addition to the abundant trout which the Apaches disdained to catch
and eat.
Scotty listened a moment to the musical notes floating down through the
valley.
“There goes Ruler!” he cried. “Let’s get the horses and see what he’s
after!”
Niltci, the Navaho boy, sprang to his feet grunting assent eagerly.
His lithe form bounded down the slope towards a grass meadow, his
red bandanna a blazing note of color, set off by an equally blazing
white cotton shirt contrasting with his long, dark blue leggins which
sparkled with rows of barbaric silver buttons. In a trice he was
leading back Scotty’s chestnut mare and his own flea-bitten desert
pony. Ever since Niltci had miraculously “disappeared” during the
religious excitements of his own people over the Black Panther, he had
been with Scotty on his mining expeditions down here, far to the south
in the Apache country of White River and far away from his own people.
To his white friends he had owed his life that time--a debt that, to a
Navaho, is never paid.
He handed Scotty the mare’s halter and started deftly saddling his own
pony. Ruler’s bays came unceasingly down through the mountains. Their
giant coonhound was of an indomitable persistence; he could be depended
upon to follow that trail, whatever it was, for days on end without
relenting.
“Up the coulée, Niltci!” shouted Scotty, vaulting his horse and
clattering down the slope from camp. Behind him the fast hoofbeats of
the Navaho’s pony followed. The mare crossed the creek bottom in a
single jump and began working up the opposite flank in a long slant. On
ahead an occasional yelp from Ruler gave inkling of his whereabouts. He
was traveling fast, for the distance between them did not seem to close
up. Frightened deer burst from cover and dashed down and across the
stream bottom as they rode. A wild turkey, scared into flight by the
showers of rolling stones struck loose by the horses, soared over the
willows in the ravine and disappeared in a mass of thick green.
Then, behind Scotty, Niltci grunted eagerly and made a queer sound that
was half a yelp.
“Yep! I see him, Niltci--cougar! There he goes!--regular old he-one!”
gasped Scotty, jouncing in his saddle as he bent to drag his rifle from
the holster. The mare shied as the heavy .405 swung out around her
flanks. Scotty’s knees gripped her fast and he let the horse go with
the bridle reins dropped over the pommel.
Ruler’s deep tones now came back in explosive volleys.
“_Ow-ow-ow! Ow-ow-ow!_” he sang, belling a hot trail.
“Heading north, up the cañon!” yelled Scotty, galloping through the
timber at full speed. “_Look_ at him _go_!”
He pointed out a running cougar far up on the yellow mountain sides,
galloping along in easy bounds that seemed effortless. His tawny body
doubled and stretched out in the queer lope of the cat tribe, now
trotting with fast-moving feet, now humping up in the swinging bounds
of the gallop. He seemed very like a buff and white household cat
magnified to enormous size. His tail drooped behind, tapering from a
thick root seemingly as wide as his hips to a ropy furry length that
undulated as he sprang easily up over the rock ledges.
“Gee, he’s an old Tom, Niltci!” called back Scotty over his shoulder,
“_Hi-Hi!_--Go it, Ruler!”
The big reddish brown coonhound yodeled in answer. He was racing along
perhaps halfway between them and the cougar, a red dot on the hot
sunlight, bellowing forth bursts of hound music as he ran. Above them
soared the high walls of the cañon, at least a mile up to the rim,
yellow and blue-shadowed and dotted with dark green conifers. A hideous
gulch, as it would look to a city dweller, terminated the cañon walls
as they narrowed, and it was cleft high above by a dry arroyo that
was all stones and boulders. But to Scotty this was the finest place
on earth, and it was a jolly old world anyhow--in spite of mines that
failed to pan out! His one anxiety was that the cougar might reach the
timber up on the rim plateau and then turn on Ruler before they could
get up there. The cat was far up, near the head of the gulch, and going
even faster than they were. Like tiny Japanese pines the distant trees
on the rim seemed to welcome him, and, while the panting horses and men
labored hard up the slope, the cougar bounded over a ledge of broken
rock and was gone into the timber.
Niltci grunted. “_Wah!_” he exclaimed disgustedly. “Lose dog! Cougar
kill him! No good! Take pony quick--me climb up straight.”
His little horse clattered close behind and Scotty reached back for
the bridle. Niltci vaulted from the saddle and with quick lithe
movements he began to climb vertically up the cañon slope. Scotty
urged the mare on up the long slant that would bring him out somewhere
near the beginning of the cleft that made the arroyo. He got two
glimpses of Niltci’s blue leggins swarming up over vertical ledges far
above him; one brief sight of Ruler scrambling up over the rim ahead
on the cougar’s trail; and then he was all alone, with the empty,
silent, gorgeous mountains brooding majestically around him. With
his passing and the shower of stones that his pony was sending down,
they would return again to the eternal peace that was theirs. Apache,
frontiersman, cavalryman, prospector, all in their turn had come and
gone, to disturb their meditations for a brief moment, to pass on
leaving these lonely cliffs and pines their silent and inscrutable
witnesses.
Scotty leaned over and whispered a word in the mare’s ear. The noble
creature was giving him her best, with the boundless generosity and
disinterestedness of our four-footed hunting companions, but somehow,
somewhere, she found it in her to call upon an extra burst of speed,
some hidden reserve in response to her master’s whisper. The top of
the gulch was near now. With distended nostrils, with heaving flanks,
and hoarse soughing breath the mare toiled up the last ledges and then
vaulted over the rim.
An open country of great pines was that plateau. Shadows and sunlight
flecked the needles under the huge _ponderosas_. Scotty saw a white
flash running like a deer through the tree trunks--Niltci, who could
run faster than a horse for a short spurt. He was far ahead, and as for
Ruler, only a deep ringing bay told of his whereabouts.
“_Wahoo!--Wahoo!_” sang out Scotty, his whoops intended more to let
them know he was up and coming than anything else. The pony he led
behind him snorted and whickered at sight of Niltci and Scotty let him
go free at the hint. The flea-bitten little mustang immediately loped
on ahead in a fast clatter. This urged the mare to top speed again, for
she would let no horse pass her, if wind and legs could prevent it!
Came a wild piercing screech and a savage miauling on ahead somewhere.
It sounded hoarse and ropy and vengeful; terrifying; intended to strike
a paralysis of fright into the creature attacked. Scotty realized
that the cougar had turned to the attack, finding that only a dog was
following him. Then Ruler’s voice floated back, yelping and barking
in a mixed medley of pain and fury. Scotty knew instantly what had
happened. The old Tom was mauling the dog unmercifully. He would kill
Ruler if help did not come instantly. Ruler was all of eighty pounds in
weight but the cougar was at least two hundred and fifty and could beat
him easily in a single combat.
A piercing whoop came from Niltci in answer to Ruler’s cry of distress.
Scotty at once whipped out the heavy .405 and its thunderous roar rang
out. The mare ducked and shied under its cannonlike reports, but Scotty
fired again and again, for he hoped the sound of the bullets ripping
through the timber would frighten the cat into treeing if not too
savagely engaged with Ruler.
As the mare burst out into an open glade, a wild drama under the pines
across from it met Scotty’s eyes. Ruler was dodging and giving back,
the cat following up and striking again and again with a tawny and
scimitar-clawed forepaw--bright flashes in the sunlight as of curved
steel hooks. Niltci was racing across the clearing, his bright knife
flashing in the sun, his wild black hair streaming out behind him. He
was sprinting his utmost to save the hound but he would be too late if
one of those terrible blows ever got home on Ruler!
Scotty threw the mare back on her haunches and raised a wabbling rifle
barrel. The scene through the sights was not reassuring. Dog and cougar
were so instantly changing places that it was impossible to fire. All
this was happening with the quickness of thought, and Scotty felt
reluctant to fire even a flash shot, for Ruler was whirling about so
fast that he might run into the bullet while it was getting there.
And then a queer thing happened. _Another_ tawny and grizzled body
suddenly projected itself into the fray! Where _he_ came from Scotty
could not imagine, but a volleying bay of savage barks told him that it
was no cougar but another dog.
Scotty stared for a moment, rifle lowered. Then--“_Blaze!_” he yelled
in amazed delight--“_Yeeoow!_--Tear him, puppy!” he whooped. The giant
Airedale launched himself like a gray thunderbolt surcharged with vim
and power at the cougar’s throat. As Scotty watched them, not daring to
fire, the cat spun around and Ruler instantly seized a hock hold. Claws
flew through the air. Blaze bounded about the cat like a rubber ball,
just out of reach. A whoop of triumph came from Niltci as he closed in
swiftly with upraised knife. For a tense instant Scotty sat watching a
chance to fire from his saddle, his heart beating so that he could hear
the pulses through his own open mouth. Then the cat whirled and soared
through the air in one tremendous bound that carried him twenty feet
away. He hit the ground running. There is no such speed as an old Tom
can put on when in a tight place! He seemed literally to fly through
the air, Blaze and Ruler a jump or two behind him. Niltci gave up the
chase and snatched at the bridle of his pony as that faithful creature
raced up after him. Scotty put spurs to the mare and galloped off in
hot pursuit.
“_Hi!_ Blaze! _Hi!_ Ruler!--_Wahoo!_” he yelled, throwing the bridle
over the mare’s neck. In answer a stentorian _Whoopee!_ came ringing
back through the forest. That was a _man’s_ voice, and almost
immediately following it there was a crash in the timber and a white
horse thundered through the pines at right angles to Scotty’s course,
the tree trunks seeming to pass the white flash of the horse like fence
pickets.
“_Left!--Left!--You pisen--li’l--horned--toad!_” came Big John’s iron
voice, jolting to the rhythm of his gallop. Scotty whooped back
greeting at him and then wheeled obediently. The cat and both dogs were
in plain sight ahead of him but Big John had an uncanny foresight in
the ways of big game, and he had no doubt foreseen some sort of twist
or short cut on the cougar’s part. The timber cleared ahead of Scotty
now, and out to the left in it he saw a giant pine, already dying of
old age. For it the cougar had turned and was now racing at top speed.
He ran up its huge bole like a cat climbing a tree, a shower of bark
spalls raining down from his claws. At the first big dead branch he
stopped and turned below his black muzzle, spitting and snarling from
an open pink mouth at the dogs underneath. Ruler was prancing around on
his hind legs, yelling with eagerness, while Blaze savagely scrambled
up the trunk, to lose his grip and tumble down and indomitably
attempted it again.
Big John reined in the white horse. “Now’s yore chance to do the
pretty, Scotty, old-timer--afore he jumps down--_shoot!_” he yelled.
Scotty quieted the mare and raised the .405. Its enormous bellow rang
out. The cat screeched and launched forth with all four claws spread
in the convulsive flurry of death. He struck the pine needles with a
heavy thud and instantly the dogs charged in, growling and worrying
at him, while old Tom rolled over on his back and spun his claws in
the instinctive defense of a cat in his last throes. Niltci clattered
up on the mustang at that instant. In a flash he had leaped from his
horse, bounded to the cougar’s side and jumped away, leaving a red
knife-handle sticking out behind the cougar’s shoulder blades. Again
there was a flash of his nimble body and the knife came out, while
blood spurted six feet from the gash. The cougar groaned and stretched
out on his side, quivering and sighing peacefully as if falling asleep.
His eyes glazed; then the body stiffened and stretched in a last tremor.
Blaze ran up on the carcass and bared white fangs at Ruler. His
attitude was crinky, cocky as a prize fighter’s, and he honestly
believed that he had killed that whole cougar all by himself! He dared
Ruler to come on. As the latter had convictions of his own concerning
that cat, a royal dog-fight seemed imminent--but Niltci seized the
hound’s collar and held him back by main force.
Big John laughed uproariously. “Hol’ him, Injun!” he roared. “Ruler’ll
be gobblin’ more’n he kin chow, fust ye know! That Blazie boy’s
feelin’ reel mean an’ ornery, danged ef he ain’t!”
Scotty laughed as Big John dismounted to boot the Airedale off the
cougar, for Niltci had signified that he wanted to begin skinning out
but wasn’t any too anxious to go near the belligerent Blaze.
“Where’s Sid, John?” asked Scotty, collecting his thoughts for the
first coherent greeting that the swift action of the hunt so far had
allowed.
The big cowman’s eyes twinkled. “Sid, he ain’t travelin’ none, these
days,” he grinned. “He’s back thar, somewhar, nursin’ along a sort of
present for ye, Scotty.” He winked enigmatically at the youth.
“How come?” asked Scotty, mystified. “Present, eh?”
“Yaas, he’ll come a-singin’ with it, pronto. Some dago writin’ on a
piece of Injun pottery, ’tis. We-all was headin’ for yore camp when
we heard Ruler kyoodlin’ back thar a-piece,” he explained, “so Blazie
and I, we ’lows to set in the game. But Sid he’s afear’d to ride,
which-same’s because he mought break that thar curio. We found it in
one of them caves, after the most all-fired climb this hombre ever got
inter, I’m settin’ here to tell ye----”
“Here he comes, now!” interrupted Scotty, whipping off his sombrero to
wave it at a new rider who came plodding through the pines with a led
pack cayuse following him. “_Whoopee!_--Oh, Sid!” he yelled.
The rider waved back. The dogs put out for him pell-mell, Ruler leaping
and fawning up on his saddle flanks, so overjoyed was he at seeing
Sid again, the Airedale jealously shoving in to get his share of the
caresses. Presently Sid rode up to where Big John and Niltci were
busily skinning out the cougar and butchering big sections of the
delicious meat.
“Hi, Sid!--what’s all this Big John’s telling me about a present?”
Scotty greeted him. “Gosh knows, I was feeling pretty blue not so very
long ago! Did you remember it was my birthday or anything?” he bantered.
“It’s a _mine_ for you, Scotty!” announced Sid, breathlessly, his eyes
alight with the joy of him who gives, “an old Spanish mine! Got the
dope here on a pottery tablet that we found in a cave dwelling.”
“Gorry!--a mine!--le’s see it!” cried Scotty. “A real, sure-enough
mine? I’d begun to think there was no such thing left in Arizona.”
“It’s at a place called Red Mesa, down near Pinacate, Scotty,” said
Sid. “The dope’s all in Latin and I can’t read much of it, but we’ll
hunt up a priest somewhere and get him to translate it----”
Scotty’s face fell, even while Sid was speaking. “‘Down near
Pinacate!’” he echoed, huge disappointment in his tones. “It _can’t_
be, Sid! Why, that’s all lava country! There’s no mesa or mineral down
there.”
“How about the Ajo Mines?” challenged Sid. “And there’s lots of ore
north of Sonoyta, only it costs too much to work it. You know that
yourself.”
“By gosh, you never can tell!” exclaimed Scotty, excitedly. “It’s
possible, though! There’s granite outcropping, even down at MacDougal
Pass, only fifteen miles from Pinacate. We’ll try it!”
“Hope it isn’t in Mexican territory--but no, ‘twenty-one miles
northeast of Pinacate,’ the plaque says----”
“Gee! Le’s see it!” cried Scotty eagerly.
Big John grinned sardonic grins as the two youths got the plaque out of
Sid’s saddlebags and held it between them, scanning it excitedly. He
heard Scotty eagerly bark out the word “‘_aurum_’--gold?” and shook
his head.
“’Pears to me that every white man but me goes crazy over that word
‘gold’!” he growled whimsically. “Fellers will lie, steal, murder, get
themselves killed with thirst or et by grizzlies--an’ all for somethin’
that they don’t want when they’ve got it!” he exclaimed. “Scotty, ef
it warn’t for you bein’ a minin’ engineer I’d warn ye to leave it
_alone_!” he said positively. “Exceptin’ it’s now November and the
tanks is probably full down thar, I wouldn’t let you go, nohow.”
But Scotty was hardly listening to him. A planning look was in his eye
and his engineer mind was already envisioning not the mine itself but
the practical ways to get out the metal.
“Ship base in Adair Bay; burros up to the mine; carry the ore in
bottoms through the Panama Canal to the East, where we can get
cheap process reduction--Gee! There’s nothing to it!” he averred
enthusiastically.
“C’rect--nawthin’ a-tall, li’l hombre!” grinned Big John sardonically.
“No water; no feed for yore burros; no road--an’ no _mine_!” he
declared.
“Yes, but ships, John!” urged Scotty. “That’s different. We can send
out a year’s supply of hay, oats and supplies for the camp just as
they do at Las Pintas, and bring back the bottoms in ore. It’s mighty
different from some inland proposition, hundreds of miles from either
rail or sea routes. If this tablet is reliable, the engineering side of
it is a cinch! Le’s hear the ethnologist.”
Sid spoke up on this prompting: “We know well that all that country
has been explored since the earliest times by the Spaniards,” he
contributed. “Sonoyta has been inhabited by them for over two hundred
years, and one of their oldest missions is San Xavier, the one for
Papago Indians who used to hunt all that country. The friars were
Dominicans--D.O.M., you see. This Fra Pedro undoubtedly got his
information from some Papago visitors to the pueblo tribes. He made
that pottery record and had it fired while proselyting among the
pueblos of the San Pedro River--probably named the river himself after
his patron saint. It all fits in, see, John? Then he got wounded or
hurt, somehow, in the general massacre of the friars in 1680 and died
in the refuge of that cavate dwelling. The Indians buried his plaque
with him in a sort of kiva. The thing seems straight enough to me,”
concluded Sid.
“Me too!” grinned Big John. “I gotto nurse you two pisen mean young
reptyles down into that no-man’s land--I see _that_!” he snorted.
“Waal, le’s git back to yore camp, Scotty, an’ I’ll git the outfit
ready. Niltci’s goin’, of course. We gotto hev at least _one_ Injun
down in that country. Thar’s lots of mountain sheep down thar, an’ that
means hoss feed, galleta grass. We’ll git a few pronghorns (antelope),
mebbe, out’n them lava craters. Ef the tanks is not dry, we kin resk
it.”
CHAPTER III
VASQUEZ
Leaving Big John and Niltci hard at work making pemmican from the
cougar and deer meat, and bags of pinole or parched corn meal from corn
purchased at a near-by Apache encampment, Sid and Scotty rode a day’s
march through the mountains to where there was a mission school--San
Mateo of the Apaches. Scotty’s idea was to get the Red Mesa tablet
translated by the teacher, who no doubt still remembered his Latin.
A small adobe schoolhouse of primitive Spanish architecture came in
sight shortly after noon, surmounting a little knoll in the mountains.
As they rode toward it Indian children, boys and girls, came running
and yelling around them to beg pennies, and with them as an escort they
rode up to the hitching rail before the school, dismounted and entered.
A lone Mexican teacher, poor and of uncertain temper apparently, sat
reading at the school desk as they entered. With an annoyed exclamation
in Spanish he put down his book and came toward them during the time
that their eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim light of the
interior of the building.
“And what can I do for the señores?” inquired the man suspiciously,
after the usual polite Spanish greetings had been exchanged.
Sid had already sized him up with a sense of misgiving, even then,
before a word of their object had been disclosed. The Mexican--his
nationality oozed out all over him--was a little weazened man, dirty,
old, with one eye drooping nearly shut from some violent slash gotten
during his past history. His face bore a sardonic, cynical, rascally
expression, even under the smooth suavity of the crooked smile that now
leered upon them. Sid felt like taking Scotty’s arm and leading him
away, right then and there! Surely this man was no one to trust with
such a mining secret as might be written on the Red Mesa tablet.
But Scotty had already guilelessly begun explaining their visit. His
simple, “We have a Latin inscription here, señor, that we would like
you to translate for us,” had settled it, for the man was already
holding out his hand for the plaque which Scotty bore.
“You understand Latin, señor?” put in Sid, hoping that he didn’t.
“Vasquez,” supplied the Mexican, “ees my name. For the Latin,
_si!_--indifferently,” he shrugged. “Anything that my poor efforts can
do to help you, though--” Once more he held out his hand for the plaque.
Again Sid felt that queer inner warning not to let the matter go
further. He disliked any man who depreciated his own worth with every
other word. Due modesty was admirable, but this groveling disdain of
one’s self was in truth but the inevitable expression of a fundamental
lack of esteem for one’s own integrity--and that usually came from a
guilty conscience.
But it was too late now. Before Sid could obey a mad impulse to snatch
the tablet away--no matter what explanations might be needed--no matter
how absurd and incomprehensible and rude it might seem--the Mexican had
begun reading the script on the pottery.
“D.O.M.--Deo Optimo Maximo,” he rolled out in the sonorous Latin
tongue. That was as far as he got in reading it out aloud to the boys.
For, immediately thereafter, an expression of amazed, puzzled surprise
came into his eyes as the boys watched him reading over the script
to himself. Then Sid noted intense concentration, and this gradually
gave way to an expression of crafty cupidity, an air of envisioning
something other than the words that his eyes were falling on, of
planning big enterprise, great affairs in connection with this tablet.
Vasquez went on to read the script entirely through in a still, tense
silence. Before he had finished, those snaky black eyes of his were
fairly blazing with avarice. Talk of the power of the word “gold” to
excite man! This man’s primitive nature stood stripped before the boys;
revealed was an elemental desire for possession before which the rights
of others, the entire veneer of civilization were stricken off as
phantoms. He might as well have been some Mexican greaser griping at a
pile of gold on some disreputable faro table along the border!
As Sid watched, the face before him looked up. Instantly it went blank,
expressionless. There was a period of reflection, while the boys waited
expectantly, then a crafty, planning look came into the eyes.
He folded the plaque under his arm--gesture of possession, which we are
told, is nine points of the law.
Vasquez smiled--a practical declaration of ownership--a maddening,
infuriating smile; the superior smile of the older man toward youth,
which seems to question the right of the young man to busy himself with
anything at all but the toys of childhood. Sid found it particularly
unbearable. He had been smiled at that way before, when some staid and
sophisticated professor had smiled indulgently at him over some of his
own theories in Indian ethnology, theories which Sid propounded with
all the fire of his youthful enthusiasm and conviction.
“Caballeros,” said the Mexican craftily, “this matter can have no
possible interest to you, since it happens to refer to the work of
the missionary brothers among the--ah, the Papagoes--” he hesitated,
referring to the script as if to refresh his memory, his thought
evidently being that the boys might have recognized that word in the
Latin. “Over two hundred years ago this--ah, yes, missionary matter it
is, my young friends--was written concerning our poor red brothers who
lived down near Pinacate,” Vasquez smiled down at them suavely.
Sid glanced at Scotty. The latter’s Scotch nature was so incensed
over this bald smiling perversion of what even his limited knowledge
of Latin had told him was the truth that he was utterly speechless.
“_Minem Argenti_” indeed! That meant “silver mine” at any rate!
Scotty’s faced blazed red, his eyes burned blue fire. As for Sid, he
saw no use in prolonging this conversation further, for in craft the
Mexican was more than his match. Boylike he preferred direct action.
“Sorry that I can’t see it that way, señor,” he replied shortly,
gulping down his indignation. “I should be glad to furnish you with a
copy of this tablet for your archives, if you wish,” he conceded, “but
that original plaque is mine.”
He held out his hand for it with a gesture that told he was not to be
trifled with further. Vasquez looked around desperately. Give him a
moment more and he would think up some smooth reply that would at least
gain time, perhaps argue the thing out of their very hands! But Sid
made a determined lunge for him as the Mexican backed away.
At once the man raised his voice in a hoarse scream, “_Ladrones!
Gringoes!_” he yelled, fending off Sid with a push of his hand while he
turned the side with the plaque under his arm away from them. Then he
ran for a door at the back of the school. Shrill yells and the shouts
of Apache came in answer to his call from outside. There was not a
second further to lose! Scotty sprang for the man, lunging low in the
football tackle for his legs, while Sid with a fierce and accurate
grip of his strong hands tore the plaque away from under his arm, the
scuffle sending the three rolling together in a heap on the dirt floor
of the church.
“Quick! Make for that rear door!” barked Sid as he and Scotty leaped
to their feet. Vasquez squirmed on the dirt floor of the schoolhouse,
cursing horribly in Spanish and rocking to and fro as he hugged a
sprained ankle. If looks could kill, the malignant fire that darted
from his snaky eyes would have paralyzed them both! Sid raced for the
rear door while Scotty stood guard over the man with threatening fists.
The patter of running feet sounded outside the ’dobe walls. Then a
leggined Apache, with long, matted black hair, stood blinking in at
them in the blazing square of sunlight that was the front door.
Sid had reached the back door. He looked in, then beckoned Scotty to
join him. The boy raced over and, once inside the room, both boys
slammed the stout panels behind them and let drop a heavy oak beam.
“There’s a small window, with a mesquite bush growing out in front of
it, Scotty--give me a stirrup hold!” gasped Sid, who was breathing
heavily from their tussle.
He stepped up in Scotty’s clasped hands and peered out the window,
with one arm crooked over the edge. A mesquite grew just outside, and
it was so heavily laden with dense clumps of mistletoe as to be in a
dying state. Sid figured they might climb out into it and remain there
undiscovered among the mistletoe clumps for a few moments. Outside he
saw three or four Apache bucks running toward the schoolhouse from
the grass huts perched upon the hillside. All over the village he
heard an indescribable commotion of children and squealing squaws, but
the Indians had no idea of what really was the matter. So far only
Vasquez’s screech for help had come to their ears.
Sid climbed out through the window and then reached down his arms
to help Scotty up to its sill. An uproar and a drumming of fists
and impotent squalls in Spanish was sounding outside the oak door
of the room as they both climbed out and gained the shelter of the
mesquite. As the last buck outside ran into the school, Sid dropped to
the ground and the boys raced for their horses. An outcry of Indian
children greeted the appearance of the two fugitives, but none offered
to interfere; only one little shaver had the presence of mind to run
shrieking to the school door while Sid and Scotty were swinging up into
their saddles.
“Now ride, Scotty, old scout--these Apache can _run_!” grunted Sid,
hanging low over his pinto and putting spurs to him. Scotty’s mare had
no idea of letting that pinto leave her, so they galloped away from San
Mateo together, leaving behind a cloud of dust and a riot of angry war
whoops from the red men piling out of the schoolhouse.
Sid’s caution as to the running abilities of the Apache was entirely
true. Behind them streaked out two lean and sinewy bucks, who had raced
out of the school door and were coming after them like arrows. What was
more surprising was the way they kept up that speed. The mare and the
pinto were going like the wind, but not a yard did those Indians on
foot behind them seem to lose! There was not a horse save their own in
sight. But three men and a swarm of children were already running down
the hill to where the ragged poles of a horse corral and the glint of a
watering pond near by shimmered in the broiling sun. Even barebacked it
would be some time yet before these could join in the chase, but when
it was once begun it would be tireless.
Not a word passed between the boys. Both were watching sharp ahead for
prairie dog holes and urging on their ponies at top gallop. If they
could outrun those two bucks behind them for half a mile they would
have passed the limits of even Apache endurance. Indeed, before half
the distance between them and the friendly hills had passed, they
saw first one, then the other, give up, with arms tossed up in weary
abandon, as both bucks threw themselves panting on the bare plain. Sid
and Scotty then let their ponies ride on at their own stride. It was
well to have an extra spurt left in them to call on, even yet!
“Mucho bad, Sid; look back!” said Scotty, a short time after the menace
of the foot-racers had disappeared and the two bucks had risen and
begun slowly to retrace their steps back to the school. Sid turned
half around in his saddle. Out from the high ’dobe façade of San Mateo
were riding four horsemen and their leader was swathed in a gaudy
striped Mexican serapé. Surely he was that rascally Vasquez. And he
would follow them until doomsday for the Red Mesa tablet!
“The whole thing’s bad, Scotty,” replied Sid. “This fellow knows now
what’s written on the tablet. Nothing can take that knowledge away
from him, either. We’ve got the plaque; but _he_ has the knowledge it
contains--and I’ll bet it’s indelible in his mind! They’ll never catch
us with those Indian ponies, but what’s to prevent his reporting this
Red Mesa mine to friends of his down in Mexico? What then?--you can
have my shirt if a squad of their guerrillas doesn’t cross the border,
pronto, and get to Red Mesa first! See it? That’s where we get off. I
doubt if this fellow will follow us very hard. He knows all he needs to
know right now.”
Scotty rode on in silence. Indeed this business _had_ been bungled!
Far better would it have been for them to have ridden into Tucson and
gotten some scientist whom Sid knew and could trust to read the Latin
for them. The very word “Gold” is bad medicine to let get abroad among
the sons of men! Many a miner’s stampede has been started on less.
As the trail reached the foothills they drew rein and looked back. Far
across the plain that little knot of horsemen was still coming on in
the tireless lope of the Indian pony. Give them twenty miles of it and
their own horses would be run off their feet!
“Here’s where we’ve got to step light and easy, old-timer!” grinned
Sid. “The Indians will be in their own country in these hills, and they
know every short cut to head us off. I wish Big John and Niltci were
here.”
Scotty growled assent abstractedly as they rode up a bare and rocky
arroyo. He was thinking of all that this Red Mesa mine meant to him.
If it really existed, its nearness to the sea made the engineering
problems of it so simple that it would be easy to get capital invested
in it. Las Pintas mines, only thirty miles south of Pinacate, had
already established a successful precedent for that, for it now had a
little railroad of its own and a ship base, just as the young engineer
had dreamed for Red Mesa. But now that Red Mesa’s location was known to
outsiders--and after being buried two hundred years, too!--the whole
thing was a mess, and of his own naïve making. The curse of trustful
youth! There was just one point of hope. According to government
regulations, whoever got there first and staked out a claim owned Red
Mesa, now matter how discovered.
Scotty raged inwardly over it, driving his mare hard under that
maddening goad of chagrin. Sid, who was less interested, followed
phlegmatically behind. As the trail reached up high on the flanks of
the mountains and headed up over a “saddle” into the next valley,
Scotty rode ahead, dismounted and began climbing rapidly up toward
the saw-teeth ridges that hung low in the sky above him. A persistent
suspicion had haunted him ever since this ride had begun, and now he
wanted that suspicion verified or dispelled.
As Sid passed below him then halted his pinto and waited, Scotty
climbed on up and soon was peering through a ragged granite gap in
the ridge. Below him fell away the bare, sage-strewn slopes and the
low ridges of the foothills. Beyond that the great sun-baked plain of
San Mateo lay like a floor. Up on its lonely hill, dim, in the blue
distance, rose the school, yellow, and as Spanish as old Mexico. A mass
of green around it told of water and of its permanent Apache colony.
Scotty then searched the plain for signs of their pursuers. At
first he thought they had followed them into the mountains, for the
plain below was bare as a table. Then he drew back, with a shock of
intense discouragement and misgiving, for his eyes had at last found
them--riding along under the foothills, toward the _south!_ There
were two of the Indians following Vasquez who was quirting his pony
mercilessly. The third Apache had disappeared.
“Gee!” groaned the boy anxiously. “He’s riding south! Toward the
railroad! That means a telegram as soon as he can send one. And the
third Indian is following _us_!”
He scrambled down and told Sid his news.
“Kick me for a rank tenderfoot, Sid!” he groaned. “Kick me from here
back to camp, and then kick me clear on down to Pinacate! Gorry, but I
let the cat out that time!”
Sid grinned. “Buck up, old settler!” he cheered him. “I knew we were in
wrong as soon as I saw that greaser schoolmaster. To give the Red Mesa
plaque to some benign old priest to read, yes; but this bird was just
a sinful man like the rest of us. The temptation proved too strong for
him. Gee, but you handed him our dope, as innocent as innocent! Whee!
Big John’ll think up something to do about it, though, and if he don’t
we will. Remember, too, that Mexico is the land of _mañana_. I doubt
if they even get any one started up from Sonora before we can make a
fast push and get there first, old scout, so don’t worry. Besides,
they can’t cross the border, unless a party of guerrillas does it.
And--they’d have a lot of explaining to do to get the grant of a claim
from the government unless regularly entered as immigrants through
Nogales--which is further from Red Mesa than we are. Our job, now, is
to keep an eye on this third Indian. He was sent after us as a spy, to
keep track of us and report, you can depend on that. We’ll send Niltci
after _him_.”
Scotty rode on, more hopeful. Sid’s rugged cheerfulness was what he
always needed to brace him up. The one strong note in his character was
his indomitable Scotch persistence. He never let go a thing once his
mind was set on it, but he was easily disheartened and set back, for he
had yet to learn that nine-tenths of our troubles exist solely in our
imaginations.
It was nightfall when they reached camp. Not a sign had they seen of
the third Indian, lurking in the hills somewhere behind them. That he
had seen _them_ was quite to be believed; he was probably watching
their entry into camp at that very moment!
Big John hee-hawed when the boys told their story; then he jumped up,
cackling hideously, grabbed Scotty and booted him all around the camp.
“Thar!--Ye pisen li’l, ornery, horned toad!--Gol-darn ye--anyhow!” he
guffawed, administering that kicking that Scotty had begged for but
Sid had overlooked. “You boys ain’t satisfied with draggin’ me down
to a country glowerin’ with petrified lava, but ye got to add to my
troubles by ringin’ in a bunch of greasers on me! I tell ye what,
Scotty, Pinacate means, ‘Bug-that-stands-on-his-haid,’ in Papago
talk, an’ durned ef I don’t stand ye on _yore_ haid, ef we don’t
find no mine--an’ we won’t! Up you goes by the heels, I’ll be plumb
hornswoggled ef I don’t do it!”
“Yeeow--attaboy!” yelled Sid, enthusiastically. “Well, how come? We’ve
got to shake off this Apache, first, or he’ll follow us clear down to
Pinacate. What’s the word, John?”
“My idee’s to do a leetle night ridin’, son--and sorter leave Niltci
behind,” grinned Big John enigmatically. “Might’s well be rollin’ yore
blankets right now, boys. The jerky’s all done and Niltci’s got it
pickled away in a bunch of parfléche skins.”
That night the four horses, with Ruler and Blaze on rawhide leaders,
pulled out of camp in the silence and gloom after dusk. One horse,
Niltci’s flea-bitten mustang, was led riderless, his halter tied to the
tail of Sid’s pinto. The white mustang that bore Big John’s long frame
started ahead up the trail, a guide barely distinguishable in the faint
light of the big Arizona stars. Black and inky buttes, jagged peaks and
swelling ridges passed them in a slow procession around the horizon
while Big John led on, stopping occasionally on the trail to reassure
himself by some blazed stake set up in a cairn of stones or a rude
corner of weathered granite rocks marking a turning point in the route.
The sun rose over the range of mountains left behind them next morning
as the pack train wound down through the last pass in the hills and
crossed the railroad track above Tucson. The horses were watered at a
little river near the tracks, a river that was bravely hurrying on to
its fate, to disappear forever in the thirsty sands of the desert to
the north. Bare and rocky hills confronted them across the valley. As
they headed into them Sid turned and looked back. A lone rider came
galloping after them like a black speck hurrying out of the ranges
across the valley. The whole party halted waiting for the rider,
whether friend or foe.
It was Niltci, the Navaho, flinging along Indian fashion on a pony, his
elbows flopping jerkily, his whole body swaying with the loose abandon
of a rag tied somehow to the saddle.
“Well?” said Sid, as the Navaho boy overtook them, “what’s become of
Vasquez’s Apache scout?”
Niltci’s bronze face cracked once in a saturnine grin. “_Quien sabe?_”
(Who knows!) he shrugged his dusty shoulders. “Me got hees pony!” That
was all they ever had out of him about it.
“Them thar rails says we gotta lope along pronto, boys!” said Big
John as he pushed the white mustang to the head of the column. “Yore
schoolmarm friend has gone by hyar, in the cyars, shore’s yore a foot
high. ’Cause why? I didn’t see no pony tracks headin’ down fer Tucson,
nohow, comin’ down this valley.”
“Think he’s gone to Nogales, by train, John?” asked Scotty anxiously.
“Shore has! Or else he’s takin’ the jerkwater local out of Tucson to
San Xavier, so he can reach the Papago Reservation ahead of us. We’ll
be crossin’ thet Injun ole folks’ home soon as we git out’n these hills
an’ we’ll shore hev trouble!”
Big John shook his head ominously and urged on the white mustang. For
him the race for Red Mesa had already begun.
“Yes, but the Papagoes are harmless,” objected Scotty.
“Not this time of year!” put in Sid. “This is corn time with them,
and every other buck is drunk on a ferment that they make of it. That
Vasquez could arouse them to almost anything, now.--Hey, John?”
“Shore, them Injuns is bad medicine for all white men in November!”
quoth Big John sententiously.
They rode on in silence. A row ahead was tolerably certain, Sid
thought. If Vasquez had reached them first by the railroad they would
probably get a hot reception!
Two hours later their cavalcade filed out of the mountains and headed
across a wide and hot plain. It was like riding into an entirely new
world. Odd twisted and contorted cactus vegetation now covered the
desert. Every plant and tree was different from anything the boys
had ever seen before. Even the mountains were different, for instead
of having the usual foothills they rose, gray and jagged and bare in
the blue sky, abruptly from a flat and sandy floor. A faint tinge of
green on their sides showed that the queer vegetation of this arboreal
desert climbed up for a considerable distance even on that dry and
inhospitable soil.
In front of them stretched a wide and flat plain, clear to the bases
of the distant gray mountains. Sparse galleta grass and patches of
gray sand dotted with creosote bushes covered it. There were clumps
of mesquite, looking like dwarfed and twisted locust trees; here and
there a bright green patch which, on riding closer, developed on to a
_palo verde_, its bright green branches and twigs a dense lacery of
glistening green. Sid rose close to one, looking for its leaves for
apparently it had none. They were infinitesimal, spiky little things,
adding nothing to its beauty, which he saw came entirely from the _palo
verde’s_ masses of sap-green branches.
As they rode further to the southwest, multitudes of what looked like
tall green fence posts appeared. They covered the ridges, each as
straight as a lance and as thick as a tree. They were small saguarro
or giant cactus, ribbed and pleated in green, and covered with thorns.
Further west they grew larger and put forth branches like huge
candelabra.
To Sid’s naturalist soul all this arboreal desert was weird and
beautiful and interesting. The tree choya, a clubby specimen with stiff
branches of thorn bristles at the ends of crooked branches, began to
appear; then the ocatilla, the “Devil’s Chair,” as Big John called it,
a tree with no trunk but with more arms than an octopus and each branch
covered with thorns and small green leaves bunched along a green stem
as hard as iron.
Towards evening, across the gray-green miles, a small brown _visita_
or mission outpost came to view. It was merely a large hut of adobe,
but the bell in its upper tower told its purpose instantly. The boys
thrilled as they looked at it, for they were now nearing the Papago
Reservation and it was quite possible that Vasquez had forestalled them
by train from Tucson.
Big John reined in the white mustang. “Nobody to home, thar, these
days,” quoth he. “The Injuns is all away at the cornfields. We gotto
ride in thar though, an’ help ourselves to water afore these hosses
kin go further.”
Sid would have preferred to keep away, but there was no choice.
Water was king in this country! They _had_ to get it, if it meant
encountering a thousand malignant school-teachers. Vasquez’s subtle
Spanish mind had no doubt led him to reason that they _must_ come here.
But what redskin reinforcements he might have picked up in that lonely
mission station imagination could not conjecture.
Slowly the miles lessened; the building loomed up brown and enigmatical
in the setting sun before them. ’Dobe houses, each with a mesquite
pole veranda in front, appeared like magic among the green stakes of
saguarros on the hillsides; then a round stone oven out in the valley
near the schoolhouse became plain to sight.
They were perhaps yet a mile away when around the corner of the
building appeared a man on horseback. A cape or serapé of some sort
hung over his shoulders, but it was too far away to get any sense of
color from it. Niltci squinted his keen eyes and gazed at him long and
fixedly while the others reined up.
“Mexicano!” he ejaculated.
“Sho’ is!” agreed Big John. “I’ll bet my hoss it’s that bird who tried
to steal your tablet, boys!”
Sid and Scotty fumbled for their hunting binoculars. A moment later
they had trained them on the man.
“It’s _him_, John, all right!” cried Sid. “_Now_ what do we do?”
The rider in the serapé answered that question himself, for, wheeling
his horse, he galloped off at full speed.
“Ride, fellers! Burn it up!” roared Big John. “We got about _no_ time
to git in thar an’ water our hosses. He’ll be back, right sudden, with
the hull b’ilin’ of drunken Injuns!”
CHAPTER IV
PINACATE
In a lather of foam the four horses raced in to the deserted Papago
village. ’Dobe houses with small blunt chimneys dotted the hillside,
but there was not so much as a dog in sight. The well was easy to
find--a cube of palings built around a curbstone to keep wandering
burros from falling in. It topped a low knoll and had a primitive
windlass lowering a bucket into its depths.
Ten minutes of sweating activity followed, Sid and Scotty scanning the
hills anxiously while each horse drank his fill; the two dogs lapped up
a hatful from Big John’s sombrero; then all the canteens were filled.
“Now roll yore tails, boys!” urged Big John, flinging himself up on the
white mustang. Sid looked to his stirrups and mounted the pinto in a
running jump. Blaze and Ruler barked excitedly as the horses clattered
up a steep slope that led through a gap in the hills. What _might_ be
on the other side of that ridge!
From its summit they saw a wide arboreal desert stretching away below,
bounded on the west by a red, saw-tooth range of silent mountains.
The rays of the setting sun swept across the plain, lighting up each
saguarro pole in a spike of vivid green. But over in the hills to the
east was coming a long file of riders--the Papagoes! They wound down
a defile, galloping at full speed, and a tiny horseman swathed in a
flying, striped serapé led them.
“Now, fellers, we shore got a race ahead of us!” declared Big John.
“We’ll make for Red Tank, out thar in the middle of this valley. See
them two little ’dobe houses? That’s her. Head for them ef any of ye
git separated.”
Across the waste of creosote bushes, choyas and giant cactus that was
the Baboquivari Desert galloped the whole party, heading due west
toward the red water pond which lies about the center of it. Near its
borders Sid could see the two ’dobe Papago houses, still ten miles
off, yet they showed as tiny landmarks, even more noticeable than the
many-branched giant saguarros which dotted the plain. Beyond them rose
the Quijotoa mountains, abrupt and sheer, bare as the ribbed sides of
a cliff. They were twenty miles away, but seemed quite neighborly, a
refuge to ride for, a place for a stand-off fight if need be.
“Gee!--regular movie stuff!” chortled Sid to Scotty as he looked back
over his shoulder again. Vasquez and his muster of motley Papagoes were
crossing from the east but had not gained a yard on them yet. But they
surely would, by the time those ’dobe houses were reached! The horses
could keep their distance easily--at first. In time these tireless
Indian mustangs would ride them down, sure as death!
“We’ll stop and stand ’em off from those ’dobe houses, eh?” answered
Scotty. “My old .405 will be the boy then, you bet!”
“Won’t be no movie scrap, nohow!” growled Big John back from where he
and Niltci were breaking trail. “The real thing don’t pan out that way.
Ride, fellers! All tarnation won’t stop these horses from drinkin’ up
the pond when we git thar, an’ we gotto make time so’s to let ’em do
it. You, Blaze,” he stormed at the big Airedale loping along beside
him, “I gotto turn ye loose, now, spite of thorns ketchin’ yore coat.
Cayn’t take no more chances with this leader.”
Big John hauled up the huge furry Airedale on his saddle as he rode,
unsnapped the leash and let him drop again. Twice before during the
race the white mustang and Blaze had run on different sides of the same
bush--with almost disastrous results but he had been still more afraid
of thorns catching and holding the woolly-coated Airedale. Ruler had no
such danger. The big hound loped along easily beside Sid’s pinto and
his sleek sides passed the thorns like silk.
In half an hour more of twisting and turning through the arboreal
desert seven miles of the distance had been covered. They still
maintained perhaps two miles of lead over the Papagoes, in spite of
the furious urgings and gesticulations of their leader in the striped
serapé.
Big John glanced a sardonic eye back at him occasionally. “Greaser--I’d
plumb dote on stoppin’ a leetle lead with ye!” the boys heard him
mutter through his clenched teeth, as he galloped along. “But them good
old days is gone forever, now. We gotto put up a tin-horn game on ye
instead.”
Just what the hoax was going to be neither Sid nor Scotty could
conjecture, but they knew Big John’s resourcefulness of old. They rode
on silently, wondering, nursing the horses around the surprising twists
and turns that Niltci ahead saw fit to make, usually to avoid great
beds of bristly choyas. Both the mare and the pinto were breathing
heavily now, and snorting in labored wheezes through their foaming
nostrils. The pace was beginning to tell! The ’dobe houses loomed up
not two miles off, but behind them came that tireless knot of Papago
riders, light and lithe, and they could keep this up all day!
Then came a yelp of pain from Blaze. The Airedale, in leaping to avoid
a spiky choya, had slammed full into a bushy acacia whose incurved
cat claw spines showed no intention of letting go again. Doglike, he
stopped still, waiting for his master to extricate him and not trying
to tear himself loose. Big John let out a round oath and flung himself
from the white horse while the rest all stopped.
“Get out yore .405 and let her talk, Scotty,” he barked, “she can
outrange anything they’ve got, an’ this-yer dawg’s goin’ to make us
take time out.”
Faint yells from their pursuers and the waving of rifles by upflung
arms greeted the stoppage of their party. The cowman cut rapidly at the
tufts of kinky hair that held Blaze fast, while Scotty yanked out his
big rifle and ran back a short way to hide behind the cover of a giant
saguarro. The distance between the parties closed up rapidly; to one
mile, to half a mile, while Blaze whined and groaned, with mute fang
laid protestingly on Big John’s bony hands as one by one the cat-claws
were cut loose from his coat.
Then the .405 whanged out and its bullets screamed high in the air. A
puff of dust flew up in front of the Mexican rider’s mustang and he
checked his horse viciously. The Indians around him, looking more like
a collection of disreputable tramps than the real thing, reined up and
presently puffs of white smoke came from them, followed by the faint
pop of their weapons.
At one of the shots Niltci suddenly threw up his arms and tumbled off
his horse. Sid gasped with dismay, but to his astonishment the Indian
boy was now wriggling off through the sage like a snake! He left his
gaudy Navaho blanket behind, though, and Sid caught Big John’s eye
winking at him. Evidently this was part of a ruse!
“You, Sid--make believe you was bending over something,” grunted
Big John. “Thar, Blaze, yore free, old-timer! Now bring me that
flea-bitten cayuse of Niltci’s, Siddy boy.”
Grinning, the youth held Niltci’s horse for him while Big John flung
the blanket over Blaze, lifted him up on the saddle, and sprawled him
out with his collar tied fast to the pommel horn. “Come on in, son!”
roared Big John to Scotty as he threw a turn of rope around the dog’s
back and vaulted up on the white mustang himself. “Now ride for all
yore wuth, boys!”
“But Niltci--how come?” gasped Sid. “Are we going to leave him?”
“Never mind Niltci--he’s some busy, ’bout now. Hep, boys!” retorted Big
John, putting spurs to the mustang. Indeed, as Sid looked around for
him, Niltci had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him up. He
himself rode on lightheartedly. Shots rang out behind them and the puff
of sandspurts kicked up the desert floor near by, but the Papagoes’
shooting was wild and the range a good deal too great as yet. The four
horses swung down toward the first ’dobe house and Big John quickly led
Niltci’s cayuse behind it and stopped them all.
“Them Injuns _may_ hev taken Blaze under the blanket fer Niltci
wounded--an’ again they mayn’t! We’ve got ’em guessin’ anyhow,” he
grinned, peering out around the corner. “Sid, you take the hosses to
the pawnd, an’ water ’em, while Scotty and I sorter dally with these
excited hombres a leetle.” He dragged out his old meat gun, a .35 with
a mouth like a young cannon and a knockout punch. “C’mon, Scotty, le’s
mosey!”
Around the corner of the house they looked out and back across the
plain. The Mexican rider had reined in at long rifle range. His Indians
were dismounting and creeping out through the bushes to right and left
while one of them held all their horses by a handful of halter ropes.
Finally the Mexican also dismounted and joined them in the ambush
attack. Their idea was evidently to creep up close and then carry the
house by a simultaneous rush.
“Fooled ’em, all right!” grinned Big John. “They shore think that
Niltci got hurt in the shootin’ an’ we brought him in hyar lashed to
his saddle. Let ’em come! You an’ I mought’s well be a-sprinklin’
the sage, Scotty, so as to make it more excitin’. Don’t shoot
nobody--tain’t wuth it.”
He went to the other corner of the house and opened fire with the .35.
Nothing loath, Scotty tore loose with the monstrous shout of his big
.405. It made a fine noise, and its bullets ripped and ricochetted
across the sand, throwing up small shell-spouts like a naval gun.
Answering shots and the whizz and smash of lead bullets striking the
building told the youth that this was not all play. Whatever story
Vasquez, if it was he, had told the Papagoes it had evidently aroused
them to an unwonted fury. It all seemed incredible, preposterous to
Scotty. The Bean-Eaters were the most peaceful of red men. Were it not
corn time he could not have believed that they were really fighting in
earnest.
“Got them hosses watered, Sid?” called out Big John presently. “Bring
’em hyar; show’s comin’ off, pronto.”
Sid led the horses back under the shelter of the house and ran to help
in the defense. Shots rang out in the sage, coming from both sides on
their flanks. It was getting high time to move on, before one of the
horses should be hit. Sid aimed carefully behind a puff of white smoke
that rose from a creosote bush at his right, and let go with his .30
army carbine. Before he could watch the result a yell and a shout of
laughter from Scotty spun him around. Out there on the plain a funny
thing was happening. The Indian in charge of the Papagoes’ horses had
now apparently mounted one of them and was riding off with the entire
bunch!
It was several seconds before Sid realized the truth--that that white
rider with the red bandanna about his forehead _could_ be none other
than Niltci himself! While Sid had been shooting, the Navaho boy had
crept up through the sage, knocked down the Papago holding the horses
and ridden off with all of them!
At sight of this disaster a chorus of vengeful whoops rose out of the
desert all around them and two or three Papagoes leaped from cover in
a futile spurt to catch the runaways. Sid could have bowled them over
easily but he was instantly recalled by Big John’s shout.
“Mount and ride, boys!” the big cowman was yelling. He himself leaped
up on the white mustang and the boys followed hard after, riding
along the banks of the red pond. A flock of teal rose in a great
flutter of wings and there were yells and imprecations behind them
from out in the creosote bushes, but they waited not to hear them. Big
John was guffawing so that he could hardly keep his saddle. “Sing,
redskins!--Yell, ye pisen horned toads! Ain’t it a grand an’ glorious
feelin’ to be set afoot though!” he shouted back at them. “Gosh durn
it, boys, I ain’t hed so much fun since we made Apache Sam eat a
rattlesnake! Niltci an’ I, we cooked up thet hoss-thievin’ stunt whilst
ridin’ out hyar. Blaze, he jest nat’rally helped!”
As for Niltci, he was now making a wide circle around the other side of
the pond, leaving behind him the screaming and fist-shaking Vasquez,
who stood in the sage searching his soul for Spanish expletives that
would relieve his feelings! Niltci rode in to join them shortly after,
with all the Papago ponies following him and a broad grin on his face.
“_Mucho bueno!_” he grunted. “What do with pony?”
“Oh, we’ll pilgrim along a while, an’ then drop ’em after dark somewhar
near the Quijotoas,” laughed Big John. “Fine work, Injun! I reckon
we’re shut of that outfit for a piece, eh, boys?”
“Not to be a crape-hanger, I’d say that we won’t see another Mexican
unless it’s a bunch of guerrillas down near Pinacate,” said Sid.
“Shore! More fun!” grinned Big John. “Them rebel greasers has
Mausers--but they cayn’t hit nawthin’ with them. Hope that Vasquez
person aims to round ’em up an’ bring ’em along. ’Twell be some fine
li’l party, I’m settin’ hyar to tell ye.”
They rode on and dropped the Papago ponies shortly before pushing
through the pass in the Quijotoas to Poso Blanco. There they
encountered a new village of Papagoes and the inhabitants lined up to
watch them go by. Big John, nothing loath, bought oats from them, as
friendly as friendly! They, of course, had heard nothing of the row
over at Red Tank. Some of them even did their best to sell the party
baskets!
“Shore, but a runner from Red Tank will git in hyar late to-night,
fellers,” quoth Big John, as they rode out on the desert once more.
“This lot of Injuns’ll be some surprised, I’m thinkin’! We’ll water at
Poso Blanco an’ pull our freight for ole Montezuma Haid early to-morrow
morning, or the hull kadoodle will be on our heels.”
After dark a dry camp was made, in a patch of mesquite and palo verde,
a long distance out from Poso Blanco. It had been a hard day of riding!
Fifty miles, in all, had they covered, and now the country was changing
from gray to red, and lava began to show up, black and glowering under
the horses’ hoofs.
It was sharp and chilly in the dark before dawn when Big John roused
out the camp next morning. “Now, fellers, we’ll water for the last time
at Wall’s Well by sun-up, an’ then make a long pull through the gap in
the Growlers, which-same brings us to Represa Tanks on the Camino del
Diablo. You-all hev never been thar, an’ hev no idee what it’s like,
but the Spaniards told the truth, fer once, when they named it the Road
of the Devil. Thar’s always water in Represa, an’ from thare we kin
work out to Cerro Colorado, the first of them extinct volcanoes. If Red
Mesa’s twenty mile northeast of Pinacate, as that pottery slate says,
you’ll see her from thar.”
The horses, freshened and invigorated with grass feed and the cool of
night, led off spiritedly, all four riding together in a bunch. In two
hours more the sky began to lighten in the east and then a shaft of red
sunlight struck into living fire the top of a mountain that rose ahead
of them, solitary and shrouded like a monk--Montezuma’s Head. Sid held
his breath in wonderment, to see the red bath of color spread down the
flanks of that huge and imposing presence, widening and broadening its
base with color, bringing out the vivid green posts of saguarros, the
dark greens of creosote, and the white patches of barrel cactus wrapped
in their dense mantles of thorns. They were in the heart of the giant
cactus country now. The floor of the desert was dotted all over with
them. Everywhere their weird candelabra shapes stood like sentinels,
upholding bent and contorted arms, notes of bright green on a gray and
pale green waste.
As they rode nearer, Sid raised a shout of discovery. “First organ pipe
cactus!” he whooped, pointing excitedly. “See it? Up yonder on the
hill!”
Out of a cleft in the rock rose a nest of what seemed to be tall and
crooked green horns, bunched together like some coral growth of the
depths of the sea. A queer plant, but all this country was filled with
these dry-soil and water-storing species, and nature did queer things
with them to make them able to survive.
Under the towering ramparts of Montezuma’s Head the horses were watered
and canteens were filled. The wide flat stretch of arboreal desert
across to the Growlers lay before them. It would be twenty miles of
riding in the hot sun. Extra bags of feed were bought and hung over
the saddle bows before they started, and from a lone cowman, an old
settler who had come here for peace and quiet, Big John borrowed a
five-gallon canvas water bag.
That “valley” was a flat stage floor, surrounded by an amphitheater
of bare, granite mountains. They rose all about them, interminable
distances away. Yet every mile of that crossing proved interesting,
for the boys never grew tired of studying this abundant desert plant
life. Saguarros in troops and regiments marched up and over the ridges
or filled in the foregrounds of mesquite and palo verde at appropriate
intervals. Patches of galleta grass that simply could not be ignored
invited the horses to a step and a munch of fodder. Gambel’s quail ran
through the bushes in droves and caused many a chase and much popping
of the small six-shooters that the boys carried. An occasional road
runner darted through the creosotes, long-legged and long-tailed.
Desert wrens sang from the white choyas where their nests lay adroitly
concealed from predatory hawks. It was high noon before the Growler
mountains were reached. They rose abruptly out of the plain, so very
steep and sudden that Scotty was convinced that the foothills that
properly belong to all mountains _must_ lay buried in the sand
underneath the horses’ hoofs. A minute before, the cavalcade had been
trotting easily across a table-land like a hall floor; in the next step
the horses were laboring up a steep and rocky trail that raised them
higher and higher with each step.
At an elevation of some eight hundred feet they paused in a gap that
broke through to the west and the party spied out the land spread out
like a map below. Red and jagged mountains rose across the flat valley
of a red and scowling land below them. A blue haze enveloped it all,
out of which rose dark purple cones of extinct volcanoes, hundreds of
them. It all seemed a black and purple mass of peaked hills, devoid of
vegetation, sizzling in the sun. “Petrified hell,” Big John had well
named it!
As they looked, the haze of vapors shifted slowly, and out of the far
distances appeared for a brief while a faint line of higher mountains,
culminating in a couple of smooth and wrinkly teeth etched faintly
against the blue.
“That’s old Pinacate, boys,” said Big John. “Look hard at her; for you
won’t see her again for a long while yet.”
“Pinacate or bust!” said Sid solemnly. “Red Mesa must be somewhere
between here and it, then, John, since we are now due northeast of the
old boy.”
“Mebbe,” retorted Big John, shaking his head. “Search me! If thar’s a
mesa, such as we have up in the Hopi country, anywhere down hyar--I’ll
eat it! Hey, Niltci!”
The Navaho youth grunted negatively. He had the keenest eyes of them
all. If there _was_ a mesa, such as he was familiar with in his own
country, he would have been the first to spy it out and exclaim over it.
“Welp! Let’s get movin’,” said Big John. “Thar’s a leetle tank
somewhere down this trail, ef she ain’t gone dry. She don’t last long
after the rains in this country.”
He and Niltci started on down the granite, but Sid and Scotty tarried
to look out once more over this lava land, iron-bound and torrid in the
heat of midday.
“Lord, what a country!” exclaimed Scotty, dejectedly. He was disturbed
to find himself frankly afraid of it. Nothing here to exercise his
constructive engineering instincts upon! Nothing--but Death!
“To me it’s a challenge,” retorted Sid brightly. “It’s still another
mood of grand old Dame Nature, of whose wonders there is no end! She
cares nothing at all for Man; but each new aspect of her is a challenge
to him to stay alive, if he dare. Doctor Hornaday”--Sid pronounced the
name with all the fervor of boyish hero-worship--“he dared this country
once, and discovered that mountain sheep and antelope had a refuge
here. Those granite mountains across from us to the north of Pinacate
are named after him. This lava looks good to me, for it makes a game
sanctuary of this country forever. Except for your sake, old man, I’d
rather there never _was_ a Red Mesa mine.”
Scotty shrugged his shoulders impatiently. He was fast falling into a
mood that had often been fatal to him before, that of trying to rush a
thing through, jumping to a conclusion on presumptive evidence and then
acting on that conclusion immediately, without trying out that homely
old remedy known as “sticking around a bit.”
“Well, le’s push through to Cerro Colorado and have it over with, Sid,”
he urged. “If there’s no Red Mesa, the sooner we find it out and get
away the better.”
But by nightfall they had reached only Represa Tank. It was an enormous
run that their tired horses had made, for that hot country, had
Scotty’s impatience only admitted it. The tank was a muddy little hole
with a small oasis of grass and a grove of mesquites surrounding it.
Near by was the famous Camino del Diablo, the thirst-haunted road to
Yuma, one hundred and thirty miles away to the west--all dry desert
travel. Big John and the boys sauntered out to look at it after supper.
Up through a gap in two red lava hills led the old trail, a sure-enough
road, as good (or bad) as the day it was made. Looking southeast behind
them, the thing lost itself in the bushes of the Tule Desert. Why or
when it had been built, the boys had no idea.
Big John regarded it solemnly for a while. “Injuns, Greasers,
prospectors an’ sodjers--they all had a purple time of it along this
trail, boys!” he exclaimed. “More’n four hundred people hev died
along this Camino del Diablo, of thirst, exhaustion, an’ jist plumb
discouragement.”
Scotty shook his head ruefully. “Let’s make a break for that Cerro
Colorado hill to-morrow, John,” he urged. “It’s about twenty miles
northeast of Pinacate, so Red Mesa _can’t_ be more than five miles from
it and directly between it and Pinacate. Ought to be a cinch to find
it, if that plaque is O. K. And, if we don’t, we’ll clear out, pronto,
and waste no more time on it, eh?”
“I’ve never climbed Red Hill myself, son,” said Big John. “But as for
clearin’ out--we _cayn’t_! Not yet awhile.”
Sid grinned delightedly. “How come?” he asked, all interest.
“What think? Ef four men goes to chowin’ man’s food, in alligator-sized
doses like you boys hev been doin’ for the last four days, how long
d’ye suppose three skins of pemmican will last?” asked Big John
sardonically. “We’re almost out of meat, boys. We’ll try Cerro Colorado
to-morrow, an’ then, Red Mesa or no Red Mesa, we rolls our freight for
them Hornaday mountains whar thar’s mountain sheep an’ antelope. Shoot
or starve--that’s us, old-timer!”
“Suits me!” caroled Sid. “We’ve got to stock up before we start back,
eh? Well--what did we bring Ruler and Blaze along for, anyhow!” he
demanded enthusiastically.
Scotty was silent as they went back to camp. He was silent, too, and
anxious all through the ride to Cerro Colorado next morning. Face to
face with the reality, with these vast fields of scowling lava, with
the dry and level plains of endless creosote bushes, with these parched
and stunted bisangas, choyas, and saguarros, his dream shriveled and
faded. A mine! Here, in all this five hundred square miles of barren
lava! A railroad to it! How cross the grim ranges of Pinacate, looming
up now not twenty miles away to the west? It all seemed so hopeless!
It would take a far sterner and more determined man than he to push
through such a project!
But Sid sang happily as they rode toward Cerro Colorado. This wild,
free land struck a response in the deepest notes in his being, the
love and enjoyment of that freedom that every explorer, every pioneer,
every adventurer feels to be his most precious birthright; for which he
will sacrifice ease, comfort, wealth, civilization itself. New species
of this marvelous desert life constantly claimed his attention. White
trees, fluffy in foliage as cotton, appeared. “Smoke Trees,” Big John
named them. A new bush, all frosty white, met them along the march,
securing a roothold even in crevices between red and sterile lava
chunks as large as a ragged rock boulder. He recognized the species as
the Brittle Bush and would have tried breaking its twigs except for the
formidable and glistening thorns with which it was armed. Then came a
vast carpet of lowly little plants that seemed made of frosted silver
and Big John drew rein. He inspected them closely and then scanned the
neighboring craters and all the vast plain about him with keen eyes.
“Antelope fodder, fellers!” he announced. “Whar ye see thet leetle
plant, thar’ll be pronghorns. They love it better than grass.”
No antelope were in sight, however. Even if so, they would be quite
invisible under that burning sun. The horses loped on. Gradually there
rose out of the desert a low hill, sheered off flat at its summit and
covered with the dense lacery of creosote bushes. Cerro Colorado it
was, and they picketed the animals out and began to climb its rocky
slopes. Rough, sharp lava, in boulders of all sizes, marked the lava
flow of geologic times from this hill; indeed the whole plain below
was made entirely of the outpourings of this one crater. Once on its
top they looked out over the country between them and Pinacate, who
loomed up grim and imposing in the west and surrounded by his wide and
desolate lava fields. Twenty dreary miles away was he!
Sid had carried with him the Red Mesa plaque, bearing its enigmatical
message in Latin which Fate had not permitted them yet to have
translated and he now produced it for that last reading. The words they
knew were still there, staring up at them from its red pottery surface.
“_XXI Milia S-O ab Pinacate--Minem aurum et argentum--In Mesam
Rubram_”--there was no mistaking _that_!
But the more they pored over the words the more unbelievable they
became! It was surely a cruel joke, a wild tale that the Papagoes had
brought to that old priest, Fra Pedro. It must be--_now_! For, below
them stretched a vast plain, stippled all over with creosote bushes,
clear to the base of Pinacate itself, twenty miles away! There _was_ no
Red Mesa, no hill of any sort on that plain! If those bearings on the
plaque were true, Red Mesa ought to be in plain sight, right now, and
not over five miles away! But there was nothing of the kind, anywhere
in sight!
Scotty finally turned to look at Sid, silent misery in his eyes.
His dream had vanished. Already his thoughts were turning to the
future. His next letter to his mother would _not_ be the triumphant
announcement of a valuable claim staked out, a triumphant return east
to organize a company, but--well, nothing much; nothing but perhaps a
brief note, saying that he had got a job somewhere.
Sid gripped his hand sympathetically. There was nothing to say. If Red
Mesa existed it certainly was not here.
“Cheer up, old top; le’s forget it and go hunting!” he grinned.
But Scotty’s tenacious persistence now came to his rescue. He turned to
Big John. “There’s a mine around Pinacate _somewhere_, John, sure as
we stand here!” he gritted. “I doubt if the Papagoes of that day knew
how to tell that friar east or west in Spanish very clearly. And a mine
wouldn’t be found in this lava but in granite outcroppings if I know
anything about mining. I’m game to stay here and look for it, boys,
while you’re hunting sheep.”
“Yaas, you pore lamb!” said Big John soothingly. “I’ll tell ye: Them
Hornaday mountains _is_ granite. An’ they’re twenty miles north_west_
of Pinacate! Put that in yore face an’ chaw it, if it’s any comfort to
ye.”
CHAPTER V
RED MESA
Across a bare and sandy divide wallowed and crunched a weary party of
horses, men, and dogs. Bare and desolate mountains surrounded them,
and one rose in sheer gray granite, capped by a black stratum of lava,
apparently two hundred feet thick. Of even desert vegetation there was
not a trace here. The sand buried everything, even the mountain sides.
One could hear the faint lisp-lisp of it, moving stealthily along,
grain by grain, under the flow of the southwesterly winds rolling up
from the Gulf of California.
“Shore this is the country that Gawd jest didn’t know _what_ to do
with!” ejaculated Big John, mopping his sweating forehead and getting
a new bite on the corner of his bandanna with his teeth. “Whar’s yore
desert gyarden, hyarabouts, Sid?”
“We’ll come to it, just over the ridge--according to the map made
by the Hornaday expedition,” replied Sid cheerily. For perhaps the
twentieth time since they had left Represa Tank early that morning,
that little book-page map was taken out and scanned by the whole party.
Big John always liked to convince himself, by standing on the map as
it were, that they were really following it. In these endless dunes it
would be easy to take the wrong gap and miss MacDougal Pass altogether.
“See?” said Sid, pointing out the landmarks, “that range ahead of us
they named the Hornaday mountains. They abut on the Pass in a right
angle. I’d give a lot to know what’s in that angle behind them! _No_
one knows. There’s a little piece of the earth for you, Scotty, as
unexplored as the North Pole!”
Scotty said nothing. He had not yet recovered from the disappointment
of finding Red Mesa apparently a myth. The whole business looked worse
than ever now. Even assuming that the Papagoes might have been confused
in translating east and west and so have given Fra Pedro the wrong
compass bearing, twenty-one miles north_west_ of Pinacate would be
_right here_, where they were now riding--and there was no such thing
as a mesa in sight anywhere! The mountains here were all of rugged gray
granite, tumbled and saw-toothed, with faint tinges of green showing
where some hardy desert vegetation had got a roothold. Mesa! This was
volcanic country, all cones or jagged outcroppings of granite! thought
Scotty, disconsolately.
He rode on dejectedly after Niltci and the dogs, who were scouring the
sand for game tracks. A short way from here the first tracks of sheep
had been seen by the Hornaday party, and further south antelope had
been shot by John Phillips in the craters of the extinct volcanoes
which dotted this country.
“There she is--there’s the Pass!” cried Sid triumphantly, as they
topped the last of the awful sand ridges. His pointing finger showed
them a river of desert vegetation below, a broad and rolling green
river that flowed through the flat sandy plain of the Pass in masses of
rich, living color. Tall green saguarros, like telegraph poles, rose
in monumental spikes along the granite bases of the mountains on both
sides. White fields of Bigelow’s choya barred their way, in big patches
of them flung broadcast across the sands. Here and there the bright
green puffball of a palo verde made a note of vivid color against the
prevailing dark shiny green of the creosotes. At sight of all that
verdure the horses broke into a run, twisting and threading through
the flat bare sand lanes. The dogs, now desert-wise, galloped along
beside them, barking excitedly and hardly noticing the choyas, avoiding
them instinctively.
And then Ruler gave tongue. _Ow-ow-ow!_ he sang, the first blessed
musical notes of the chase that had come from his throat since they had
left the Catalinas! Niltci whooped a shrill challenge and lashed his
mustang to full speed. After him put out Big John, and then Scotty,
glad of any excitement to take his mind off his troubles. Sid rode
leisurely after them, merely glancing down at the tracks the dog had
discovered in the sand.
“Buck mule deer--a small one. Here, Blaze!--Heel!” he called sternly
to the Airedale, who had started bounding after Ruler. Sid halted his
horse and watched the three riders racing down the Pass. The frantic
bellows of Ruler now told him that the deer had been sighted, and
presently Sid got a distant glimpse of him, a tiny gray shape bouncing
stiff-legged as he dodged through the desert cactus garden.
“Mule deer all right! Guess we’ll stay out, Blazie,” he told the dog.
“There are enough after him now to catch him with their bare hands!
Let us try for mountain sheep, meanwhile.”
He turned the pinto toward the base of the Hornaday Mountains which
rose in rugged gray-green masses abruptly from the sand floor of the
Pass. Their summits were ridged with rough pinnacles of gray granite.
What might be on the other side of those ridges at once intrigued the
exploring instincts in the boy. He was rather glad of this chance for a
lone investigating hike--with good old Blaze his sole companion!
At the base of the mountain, where rock sloped up steeply from sand,
he checked his horse and a joyful exclamation burst from him. An eager
whine came from Blaze, as he, too, snuffed in the sand. Here they had
discovered a regular mountain sheep runway! The big cloven tracks, like
pairs of roll biscuit prints, were plentiful and deeply graven in the
sand. They ran both ways, but a vague impulse, coupled with a decided
penchant for climbing up and exploring these mountains, led Sid to halt
at the first lone track that led off upward from the main game trail.
It was now nearly noon, and he knew that the sheep would be high in the
mountains at this time of day.
He picketed Pinto out on a patch of grass and started up on foot.
Helped by Blaze’s nose it would not be very hard to follow that track.
Where a print lacked in the rocky soil, eager barks from the Airedale
now led Sid on. They were climbing fast and furiously before they knew
it, the impetuous dog leading Sid up and up the immense craggy slopes.
Below him the garden of the Pass rolled out in a great gray plain. A
mile down it the faint belling of Ruler told him that the mule deer
was still leading them a busy chase. His own sheep tracks were rising
toward the ridge in a series of steep bounds, climbing with ease where
Sid had to haul himself up or make toilsome detours to avoid formidable
white choya bushes. Sid hoped it was a ram. Since the Montana hunt
for the Ring-Necked Grizzly he had not shot a single specimen of that
king of American game animals, the Big-Horn. A Pinacate head, to match
his Montana one, would look mightly well in the Colvin trophy den now
located at their new ranch up in the Gila Cañon.
Presently Blaze let out a volleying bray and raced on up the rocks
toward the ridge. There came a clatter of rolling stones, and Sid
looked up to see a huge ram, followed by two ewes, silhouetted for an
instant against the blue skyline. Immense curled horns encircled the
big sheep’s head. For a moment he stopped and looked back, his superb
head poised grandly, his horns branching out in regular symmetrical
spirals, his white ears standing out like thumbs in front of the horns
and his white nose, cleft with the black mouth and nostril lines, a
circle of white against his brown neck.
Sid shouted to the dog sharply and raised his rifle, but before he
could steady the sights the ram wheeled and was gone like a silent
shadow. Blaze yelped and roared out his ferocious challenge, then at
Sid’s repeated yells he turned and came back whining with impatience.
The youth began to feel that Blaze would be a mere nuisance in this
sheep hunting because of his lack of experience. Ruler would have
circled craftily to head off the Big-Horn and drive him back on the
hunter, but Blaze was always for the stern chase and the pitched battle!
Sternly ordering the dog to heel, Sid climbed on up cautiously and
reconnoitered through the rocks over the ridge. A shallow arroyo
lay between him and the next ridge, and beyond that he saw over the
mountain back, beyond a void of purple distance, a flat red table
of rock, etched sharply by the ragged saw-tooth of the ridge between
him and it. Sid glanced curiously at that odd rock formation for an
instant, then his eyes swept the hollow below for sight of that band of
sheep. Blaze whined and tugged frantically at his collar. He had seen
them already, long before Sid’s slower eyes could pick them out in that
mass of rocks and sparse vegetation below.
“Gorry!--There they go! Steady, Blaze!” he gritted through his clenched
teeth and then raised the rifle. The army carbine’s sights sought out
the game swiftly. Sid had filed a forty-five degree cut on the front
sight, so that it showed up as a little white mirror over the flat bar
of his rear sight. Cutting the mirror square in two with the rear bar,
he found the galloping ram and raised it up to just under the distant
shoulder of the Big-Horn.
Sid was just on the point of pressing the trigger--indeed had already
felt the first movement of the creep of its bolt action--when a bright,
shiny, horizontal flash,--the flash of an arrow--shot across the
gray slopes of the ridge opposite! The ram staggered, stumbled, and
struggled up a ledge, pawing convulsively with his hoofs. A second and
a third arrow flash swept across the hillside and stopped in the ram’s
flank. Sid gasped with astonishment. Those flashes were _arrows_! Then
he grabbed Blaze’s collar instinctively, put down the rifle hurriedly,
and closed his fingers around the dog’s muzzle so that he could not
bark.
Sid was too nonplussed for a moment to speak. Arrows! It _could_ not
be Niltci, for the Navaho boy had long since abandoned his bow, now
that his white friends kept him in unlimited cartridges. Sid watched
the ram in his death struggles, not daring to move so much as his head.
Those arrows had been shot by some unknown Indian. These mountains were
_inhabited_ then. He could see the two ewes tearing wildly down the
arroyo toward a grim and scowling lava field that lay far below. They
disappeared around a corner of granite, some distance down, but still
the Indian who had fired the arrows did not come out of his hiding
place.
Who could he be? Sid knew that the Papagoes had long since abandoned
this hunting ground. Their tank still remained, filled eternally from
season to season with rainfall, the sole reminder of that time when
the tribe used to gather here to drive the sheep and antelope into the
craters and slaughter them wholesale in the trap thus set. Now the
Papagoes had become a pastoral people, raising corn, selling baskets,
receiving their beef rations from a beneficent government, which,
however, kept them virtually prisoners on two small reservations. This
Indian arrow-shooter _might_ be a wandering Yaqui from Mexico, but that
was hardly possible. It would go hard with him if caught on this side
of the border by any of our rangers!
Why did he not come out? Sid was sure that it was because he had heard
Blaze’s bark coming up the mountain, followed by the appearance of
those hunted sheep. He was lying low.
For what? To shoot down the hunter the same way that he had laid low
the ram? Well, if he had to wait all day, he would not be _that_
victim, Sid decided, then and there!
And meanwhile the ram lay a silent, pathetic heap of horns and hoofs,
lonely under the hot sun, surrounded by the gray crags and green
acacias that had been his home--while the enigma of his death remained
still inscrutable. A stunted green saguarro rose near where he had
fallen, a marking-post of the desert; the approach below him was
guarded by a sturdy choya, to stumble into which would be agony.
For a long time Sid stood watching the place where the arrows had
seemed to come from, undecided what to do next. There was a craggy
boulder over there, jutting out from the hillside, and behind it
strung out cover in the shape of creosote bushes and rocky fastnesses
of jumbled granite. But nothing moved. The unknown Indian still lay
hidden, watching that ram carcass, too, like a trap set ready to
spring. Sid lowered his head slowly, inch by inch, determined to play
this waiting game to a finish himself. His muscles were trembling from
holding his fixed poise so long and the under tendon of his right knee
ached.
It had never occurred to him that he was in any danger himself--when
suddenly a savage growl rumbling in Blaze’s throat caused him to turn
halfway to the right. Instantly came the twang of a bow and the sharp
hiss of an arrow. Blaze bawled out in pain, then sprawled out flat,
with all four of his furry paws spread out like woolly broom handles,
while his pained eyes looked up piteously to Sid. An arrow transfixed
him above his shoulders. The dog seemed paralyzed as Sid dropped beside
him, hot anger welling up in his heart. A hurt to one’s own person does
not cause a whiter rage than one done to a dumb pet! Sid peered about
him, seeking with glittering eye for something to fire at. Beside him
Blaze moaned, sighed deeply, and then fell over stiffly, the arrow
sticking in the rock and partly supporting him. Sid hesitated to pull
it out. To start the blood spurting free now would kill whatever chance
he had yet for life--if he were not already gone.
It seemed a most cruel shot, to Sid. _Why_ had the Indian spared him
and shot his dumb and faithful companion instead? Then he began to
glimpse signs of wily red strategy in all this. The unknown enemy
intended to capture him _alive_ if possible! With Blaze at his side it
could not be done by any creeping attack, for the dog’s keen nose would
immediately detect the near presence of any person whatever.
Sid looked cautiously all about him, finger on trigger and rifle ready.
To the south the saw-tooth ridge rose high above him to yet loftier
levels. All about him were jagged pinnacles, rough and craggy and full
of hollows and rocky points which could not be seen around. To creep
back down the mountains, somehow, and then fire three shots for help
as soon as possible seemed to him the best plan. He hated to abandon
Blaze while there was a spark of life left, but would it not be better
for them to be separated anyhow, now? The dog might get away if he
recovered even if Sid should be captured.
That arrow that had pierced Blaze had come from a rocky lair to the
north of their position, just how far away he could not tell. The hiss
of it had really been Sid’s first warning. Never again could he forget
that sharp, ghostly _whew_! Making for a sheltering hollow which would
be out of sight of the rocky lair, yet be open enough for him to see
around him a short distance, Sid began to crawl down from the ridge. As
yet he had hardly moved, but his heart was beating wildly. It seemed
to him absolutely hopeless to get away from this mountain with he
knew not how many hostile Indians all around him. The very idea that
this desolate land was inhabited by even a small tribe seemed weird,
uncanny. Not a track save their own had they seen so far. Even the old
wagon ruts of the Hornaday expedition had long since been buried in
the sands or washed out by the rains. It had been all new country, all
virgin. If an Indian band lived here they could not be Papagoes, for
the first one missing from the reservation would call out a troop of
soldiers after him. Had Vasquez, then, already gotten up from Mexico
with some Yaquis?
Sid thought of all possible solutions as he crept warily downhill,
pausing before each craggy outcropping in his path before daring to
pass it. Then a glimpse of something red which moved behind a bush
below to the left caused him to stop and raise his rifle, and, while
poised in the tense set of the aim, a sudden, almost noiseless, rush of
feet behind him sent electric shocks all through him! There was no time
to even lower the rifle and turn around. Subconsciously his leg muscles
leapt out wildly. He had an expectant sensation of a knife entering
his back--and then a thin band like a strap swept down and across his
eyes and something tight gripped around his throat. Knees, and the
heavy weight of a man on his back, bore him to earth. His arms sprawled
out, dropping the rifle; his tongue shot out and out, gagging fiercely
against that awful halter grip around his throat. Sid thought of the
Thug strangling cloth in that last instant before an enormous drumming
in his head gave way to blackness clouding over his eyes. Then came the
heavy thump of the ground striking him, and unconsciousness....
It seemed but a very few minutes, the continuation of some terrible
dream, when his eyes opened again. He was lying face downward where
he had fallen, and his lungs were pumping and sucking air in great
draughts, as if recovering from some endless and vague period of
suffocation. Blood was trickling down his face and making a little pool
on the rock, while a cut or a bruise, he could not say which, over his
eyebrows smarted sharply.
Sid made a slight sound and attempted to turn over. Two grunts answered
him. Immediately a strange Indian was at his side helping him turn over
roughly, and he learned for the first time that his arms were pinioned
behind. Sid looked up into the buck’s face. It was round, hawklike and
stern, with narrow black eyes that had no pity. He recognized the type
as Apache instantly. There was none of the stolidity of the Pima and
the Papago in that face, nor of the regular-featured, straight-nosed
Navaho, like Niltci, who resembled a copper-colored Englishman. This
man looked more like some bird of prey, in the Roman hook of his nose
and the craggy sternness of his mouth. The first word he uttered as he
turned to his young companion confirmed Sid’s thought, for it was in
the harsh Athapascan dialect of the Apache.
Between them they yanked the boy to his feet and started up the hill.
Nothing further was said. They passed Blaze’s niche, the dog still
lying on his side, a pathetic furry heap dominated by the arrow, and
one of the Apaches pointed and let out a grunt. The other nodded.
Evidently they considered him dead. They pushed Sid on down into the
arroyo and crossed to where lay the ram. The older man then grunted a
few words and at once set about paunching the game. The younger led on
with Sid.
As they topped the rise of the next ridge, that same flat red rampart
that Sid had noticed while stalking the ram burst on his view. But now
it proved to be a really wonderful natural phenomenon. Fire, lava,
a tremendous outpouring of the bowels of the earth had been at work
here, no doubt during that period when the craters were formed and it
had cast up that mighty red wall. Sid wished that Scotty, with his
knowledge of geology, were with him now to study out the wonder of this
vast red rampart before his eyes. The whole interior angle made by the
bend of the mountains had been blown out here by lava explosion, the
huge granite strata having been forced up on end like a pair of trap
doors, making two enormous red ramparts, vertical-sided and running
out from the rocky angle of the hills until their outer ends rose like
towers. These terminated the red walls, a thousand feet from the ridge
to the end of the lower gap where the lava had burst out. At that lower
end the ramparts rose at least four hundred feet sheer from the granite
slopes, and a great apron of black and scowling lava ran down from
there at a steep slope, to lose itself under the sands far below. But
the walls were of sheer granite, colored red by the fierce heat of that
molten lava of ages ago.
Red Mesa! Red Mesa! Red Mesa!--The certainty of its being the lost
mesa kept singing in Sid’s ears as they descended. No such geologic
formation as this could exist anywhere around Pinacate and not have
been discovered before. Those ancient Papagoes who had reported it
to Fra Pedro of 1680 no doubt had called it a mesa by reason of its
resemblance to the true mesa formation. But, unlike the mesas of the
north which are formed by water scouring and erosion, the walls of this
one had been cast up bodily by the explosive force of pent-up lava.
Still, there was resemblance enough to have given the place its name,
Red Mesa, Sid was certain.
The young Apache kept behind Sid as he prodded him on downward. There
was no trail. His savage guide avoided choyas and chose the best
possible routes for descent, that was all, while steadily the giant
wall of Red Mesa frowned higher and nearer above them. Sid looked up
as they approached the base of the west wall. Flat slabs of bare,
smooth granite went up at a steep slope for perhaps a hundred feet.
Above that the red wall rose sheer to fissured and turreted pinnacles
three hundred feet above the top of that awful slope. Inaccessible from
anywhere below was Red Mesa!
After more rocky descent they came around the great tower at the lower
end. Mighty and majestic, like the belfry of some huge cathedral, it
rose out of the depths of the valley. A great smooth slope of black
lava, shiny and slippery as glass, formed a slanting apron here,
spanning the gap from tower to tower. But what an apron! Like the face
of a dam, it spread across from one wall to the other, closing a gap
three hundred feet wide and itself at least four hundred feet up to its
edge, the towers of the two walls rising for half their height above it
still. Geologically it was an imposing instance of the unlimited power
of Nature. When that mountain side had burst, the whole round world
must have shaken like a leaf and all the marine creatures in the great
seas to the north have been swept over by a tidal wave of unexampled
proportions! The lava had flowed out and downward, cooling slowly until
this dam--for a cataract of fire--had formed and remained as a grim
witness to the stupendous natural event that had once taken place here.
Sid, the educated white boy, had become so interested in reconstructing
the geological aspects of this formation that he almost forgot the
irksome tightness of the thongs that still bound his arms and the
almost certain death to which he was being led. He knew only too well
from border history the ways of the wild Apache! But the Indian guard
behind him had no other thought but his duty as jailer. While Sid’s
wondering eyes were scanning that giant apron of lava that flowed down
out of Red Mesa, the Apache suddenly spun him violently around. Sid
had one whirling glimpse of a small black opening in the lava above,
looking like a ragged mouth, and his curiosity about it had just begun
to leap up overthrowing the greater marvel of the whole cataclysm of
Red Mesa, when his head was forcibly held from turning and his bandanna
was whipped deftly across his eyes. The sandy plain below disappeared
from view, and in its place was now an impenetrable blackness.
Presently he felt the grip of two firm hands on his elbows. A vigorous
push set his feet in motion to hold his balance. By the shortness of
his step and the upward lift of it Sid knew they were climbing again.
Often the Indian stooped down and took hold of his ankles to guide
his footsteps to some secure place. Sid could tell by the opprobrious
epithets in Apache with which the young fellow belabored him that he
scorned Sid’s blind clumsiness and was angry and intolerant, but Sid
made no sign that he understood the language. Once, though, he nearly
gave himself away, when the buck shouted “Right!” sharply in Apache and
Sid instinctively moved his foot over that way, searching for a crevice
in the lava.
After a long and slow climb they stopped, and Sid felt the Indian’s
fingers gripping him strongly around the back of the neck. It was
useless to resist. His head was being forced silently down, and the boy
submitted wonderingly. Then they went forward, bent over again, and
twice he felt the top of his head striking bare and jagged rock above
which cut painfully. Instantly he thought of that little black mouth in
the lava apron that he had caught a mere glimpse of when the Indian was
turning him around. They were in that cave now, whatever it was. It was
hot and suffocating in here. Sid choked for breath and sneezed as faint
sulphur fumes pringled in his nostrils. He had a sense of being urged
slowly upward. Now and again the fingers on his neck would press him
to earth and he would go forward on hands and knees, where the least
attempt to raise his head would result in a painful scratch from the
tunnel roof that was evidently above them.
In time a draught of pure air began coming down from somewhere above.
Sid could see nothing, yet with the buoyancy of youth he was strangely
happy and also consumed with curiosity. They would probably stake him
out and build a slow fire on his stomach when he got up out of this
tunnel, but while it lasted it was all as exciting as exploring it
on his own would have been! More air and purer came to him now. The
sulphur fumes disappeared. Something wooden like an upright log ladder
struck him on his forehead and the Indian raised him up and called out
loudly. Muffled voices answered him from somewhere up above. Then he
felt his guard stoop and lift him by the legs while invisible hands
above reached down and seized him under the armpits. He was hauled
up the ladder and then he sensed being in some sort of a room--being
guided across it.
The indescribable sweetish odor of Indian was strong in here. Sid had
been so often in tepees and hogans as to be able to recognize that
smell instantly. All the races of man have a distinctive smell of their
own, and the aboriginal ones, Malay, black boy, yellow man and red
Indian are all agreed that the white man has a smell, too.
“White man smell like sheep!” as a Piute chief had once truthfully put
it! The odor of corn meal, burnt feathers, paints and greases told Sid,
too, that he was in some sort of medicine lodge. It could not have been
a kiva, for the dank smell of damp stone was wanting.
Then a sudden lightening of all the cracks around that bandanna told
him that he was in bright sunlight once more. There was the perfume of
growing squash and melon and pepper, the faint odor of green beans,
the smell of grass--and of water! Red Mesa was really a valley then,
inclosed by two giant walls and shut off from below by that ancient
lava apron! And it was inhabited by a band of Apache!
That much Sid’s sense of reasoning had told him before the squeals of
children and the cries of squaws and shouts of men came to his ears.
People were all around him now, exclaiming in Apache, every word of
which he understood. Then the deep voice of some one in authority came
toward them and a guttural command to untie him was given. The bandanna
was at once whisked from Sid’s eyes. He stood for a time blinking in
the glare of the sun. High red walls rose up to right and left of him.
A large tank of water, almost a pond, filled much of the basin between
them, but there were strips of cultivated plants along its borders,
too, and here and there he noted a grass Apache hut.
Sid fixed his eyes finally on a tall chief who confronted him.
The man’s features were round, heavy and forceful, such as we are
accustomed to associate with the faces of the captains of industry
among our own people. His long, coarse hair fell around his ears, tied
about the brows with home-woven red bayeta cloth. A single eagle’s
feather sticking up from the back told Sid that this man was a rigid
disciplinarian of the old school and a formalist in the customs of his
tribe, for it signified only one coup, such as a far younger man than
he would have made in the old days. He wore a white buckskin shirt,
with the tails outside coming down nearly to his knees. Long white
buckskin leggins that disappeared under the apron of his breech clout
told Sid, further, that this chief was a primitive red man, or else had
not seen white men for many years.
As Sid’s eyes still blinked, getting accustomed to the strong light, a
coppery grin cracked the chief’s features.
“Well! I’ll be--! What have we here!” he exclaimed in excellent English.
Then he turned angrily to the young buck at Sid’s side and burst into a
storm of guttural Apache invective.
CHAPTER VI
THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN
That torrential outburst which raged out from the Apache chief seemed
to scorch and wither with shame the young Indian buck who stood beside
Sid. The chief was upbraiding him in the most scathing terms in the
Apache language, as Sid understood it, for the folly of capturing and
bringing here a white man to their stronghold. Sid’s own person was
safe according to Indian honor so long as he remained in the enemy
camp, but what to do with this white man, now that he was here, would
be a matter that only the old men could decide in council. As for the
youth, whose name Sid learned was Hano, he was being condemned to the
direst penalties for his act. The chief finally paused, arms folded
across his chest, and eyed the youth sternly, awaiting what reply the
culprit could make.
“The white man was spying on us, my father,” replied Hano, simply. “It
seemed best to take him, lest he get away and tell others.”
“Why did ye not follow him, then? If he saw nothing you could have let
him go! If he saw--kill and kill quickly!” thundered the angry chief.
“Die thou shalt instead!”
The youth hung his head, unable to answer. It disturbed Sid strangely
to learn that this boy was indeed the chief’s son, and that this
Spartan sentence was being passed on him by his own father. He himself
would have pardoned Hano, for youth does not think far ahead; it
acts mainly on impulse. That he, an enemy, might discover the secret
stronghold of an Apache clan and should therefore have been slain
or taken seemed to Sid, too, the natural reasoning for Hano to have
followed. Sid felt grateful that he had, for some obscure reason,
probably the bond of youth itself, spared his life instead.
The chief, however, paid Hano no further attention but turned on Sid
those piercing black eyes that seemed to look through and through him.
“Young white man, who are you and what is your business down here?” he
demanded sternly.
“My name is Sidney Colvin, son of Colonel Colvin, U. S. Army,
retired,” answered Sid, facing the chief respectfully.
The Apache’s eyes widened for an instant, startled, if such a stoic
could be. “Colvin!” he exclaimed.
Then all expression faded from his face. His hand, however, rose,
involuntarily to touch a gold ornament that hung pendent from his neck.
Sid thought for a moment that a play of memory seemed passing in the
black inscrutable depths of his eyes. Under that eagle gaze, though,
he himself could not long endure; in sheer embarrassment he dropped
his own eyes until they, too, fastened themselves on the ornament. It
was a gold twenty-dollar piece, pierced with a small hole in its upper
rim and hanging from a rude chain of beaten silver. To Sid the curious
thing about it was that it was the sole thing of white-man origin about
the chief’s person.
“And your business?--a prospector, I suppose,” said the chief, after
another silent scrutinizing interval.
“No, ethnologist,” replied Sid quietly.
“Ethnologist!” echoed the chief. An expression of strong disgust
crossed his stern face. “These learned fools who misrepresent and
misunderstand the Indian worse than all other white men!--Pah!”
Sid was more than astonished at this outburst. This Apache had
evidently been well educated--once--perhaps at Carlisle. Why, then, had
he come here to live with this wild band and become their chief? That
could wait; at present he was glad to talk ethnology with this educated
Indian, for Sid, too, had felt that disgust over the stupidity and
lack of understanding displayed by the average ethnologist’s treatise
indicated in the chief’s tones.
“It’s astonishing how much they do misunderstand you,” agreed Sid.
“Knowing as they should the Indian’s fundamental belief that all life,
man, animal, and growing tree, has a soul which is the gift of the
Great Mystery and returns to Him in the end, how _can_ they report
your Indian ceremonials as mere spirit worship, devil worship, sun
worship--Gad! It makes my blood boil!” Sid spoke vehemently, warming
up as his own indignation over the vapid misunderstandings and the
utter lack of comprehension of most ethnologists’ reports enraged
him. “Chief, you know, and I know the Great Mystery! As one of your
own great men has said, ‘He who may be met alone, face to face, in
the shadowy aisles of the forest, on the sunlit bosom of the great
prairie, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, or yonder in
the jeweled vault of the night sky!’ Because the Indian is too reverent
to speak of Him by name, our worthy ethnologists report that this and
that tribe believes in no supreme God, only in spirits--bosh!”
Sid’s eyes sparkled with the intensity of his feeling. He forgot for
the time that he was a prisoner of a hostile tribe, in a desolate,
barren region, far from white habitation. The burning sense of the
injustice of even the best of us toward the Indian swept him away. He
spoke out his convictions, as ardently as ever he had championed the
Indian’s soul before those white professors who had come to study them
here in the southwest--and had misunderstood.
The Apache’s eyes softened at the youth’s vehemence. “My son seems to
comprehend something of us. It’s astonishing--rare, in one of your
race! I lived long among the whites--once,” he smiled sardonically.
“The massacre of my people at Apache Cave, what think you of that?” he
asked.
Sid realized that his attitude toward the whole Indian problem was
being tested out by this wily chief; that upon his answer depended
his life. Yet he simply replied out of his own convictions, with no
thought of how it might affect his fate.
“A pitiable business, chief!” he answered. “Men, women, children, all
shot down to the last one! I suppose it _had_ to be, since you would
not surrender. The Army had its orders, you know.”
“Orders!” The chief drew himself up proudly. “The Apaches _never_
surrender, to injustice!” he exclaimed. “I am Honanta, son of that
Chief Chuntz who fell in that fight, white man!”
Sid glanced up at him, surprised. “I always understood that not one
Apache escaped alive from that cave----” he began, wonderingly.
“No! Let me tell you. There was _one_ humane officer among the white
soldiers who entered that cave of death, after all was over. He came
upon my mother, lying among the heaps of slain. She still lived, shot
in three places. She held me, an infant, protectingly hid in her
arms. A soldier raised his gun to end her life--a wounded squaw would
be a mere nuisance, you know!”--the chief interjected with bitter
sarcasm--“but that officer struck up his rifle. He had them take my
mother to the ambulances. And, out of the kindness of his heart, that
she might not die of starvation, he gave her--this.”
Honanta raised his hand again to the gold piece.
A curious sensation of excitement went through and through Sid. His own
father, Colonel Colvin, had been a young second lieutenant of cavalry
in that fatal fight of Apache Cave. But he had never mentioned the
squaw who had survived, nor the twenty-dollar gold piece; in fact he
had always been most reticent about that battle, regarding the whole
subject with the most extreme distaste. Sid felt that even if Colonel
Colvin _were_ that humane officer, to attempt to establish his own
relationship with him and so gain immunity would be regarded by this
crafty chief as mere opportunism.
“The officer’s name, did she ever learn it?” he contented himself with
asking.
The chief smiled enigmatically. “My son,” said he gently, “to-morrow I
shall be able to give that Sun Dance that I vowed to the Great Mystery
forty years ago. Is--is your father still living?”
“Yes,” said Sid. “He has a new ranch up in the Gila Cañon country. We
came west again, after I settled down to work with your people. The
lure of Arizona was always very strong with father. Here was the scene
of his early active days; here, in that grand mountain region, he wants
to live until his time comes. It’s a great country!”
“Once more, then, before I die, I must leave the Arms of the Great
Mystery!” mused Honanta, more to himself than to Sid. Then his whole
manner toward the youth changed and he motioned him courteously toward
his large grass lodge.
“The Arms of the Great Mystery!” So that was what they called Red
Mesa! thought Sid as they walked toward the lodge. Truly, like great
protecting arms, those mighty red ramparts rose on each side of this
little valley, shielding this lost band of Apache forever against
further encroachment. As to the chief’s remark about giving a Sun
Dance, it seemed to Sid that he himself appeared to be a vital and
necessary part of it. Whether he would be a sacrifice in it or what
part he would be called to play in it was a mystery to him. To-morrow
he would know, though!
Sid entered the lodge with Honanta, Hano following submissively. He
looked about him curiously at the giant hoops of ironwood overhead
which formed its arches, at the dense thatch of galleta grass bundles
which kept out rain and sun alike. There was little furniture.
A red olla, sweating cool water on its porous surface, stood on
a three-pronged fork in a corner. A gourd dipper hung beside it
and at a motion from the chief Sid drank. There were bundles of
cane-and-ironwood arrows which Sid noted were curiously tipped with
native copper heads. There were bows strongly backed with bone;
parfléche skins for storing dried meat and berries; baskets holding
shelled corn. From the rafters hung strings of red peppers and dried
corn ears, and loops of dried squash. Shallow baskets held red beans,
specked with white dots.
Sid sat down on a roll of skins. Hano, who had entered with them, still
remained standing. He seemed to be waiting for something, and Sid noted
that the chief had not yet ordered him to be seized and bound. After
a time, while the chief was apparently thinking over some further
questions, an interruption came--the sound of a woman’s voice crooning
softly. She entered the lodge, beautiful as the night. She was clad in
soft white buckskin, long-fringed, heavily beaded, and in her arms she
bore a tiny bundle from which came soft infantile noises.
Hano’s bronzed face was working in agony of feeling as she entered.
Sid and the chief rose respectfully.
“One boon, my father!” burst out Hano hoarsely as the girl hesitated
before them, the soft smile of motherhood on her face.
“Which is?” queried the chief turning upon him sternly.
“To perform the whispering ceremony for my newborn son--before I die,”
begged Hano brokenly.
Sid’s heart gripped him as he watched the tiny bundle being passed
across into the young father’s arms. He hugged his baby close; then
pressed his mouth to the little ear that he uncovered. Sid knew that he
was whispering the name of the Great Mystery into his son’s ear, the
very first word of the human voice that the newborn Indian babe hears.
It was an old, old ritual of ancient Indian custom.
Then: “Farewell, little one!” he heard Hano’s anguished tones murmur
as he passed the child over to its mother. The girl started back and
looked at him astounded, then at Sid, and finally she turned to the
chief, her eyes dark pools of questioning.
“It must be, my daughter,” said Honanta. “My son has erred grievously.
It is for the old men to decide.”
He blew on a bone battle-whistle which dangled along his thigh like a
quirt. At the signal two warriors appeared.
“Take him to the medicine lodge! Bind!” ordered Honanta. He turned
his back on Hano and covered his face. A suppressed, hurt sound, like
some dumb animal mortally wounded, came from the girl and Sid felt his
throat choking. Hano turned once more as they led him away.
“Farewell, Nahla!” his voice rang. “Bring my little son to the stake,
that he may see how a warrior can die.”
For a long time there was a dead silence in the lodge. Sid glanced
from time to time at the stoical, impassive face of the chief; then at
the young wife, who sat huddled in the rounded end of the lodge, her
newborn child in her arms and silent tears coursing down her cheeks.
Grief had stricken this lodge--and all because of him. Indian justice
was stern, inexorable; on the same exalted plane as its religious
conceptions, its four cornerstones of Indian morality--Truth, Honor,
Courage, Chastity. For sparing him Hano was to be punished. Was he,
too, doomed to take some awful part in to-morrow’s Sun Dance?
Sid knew vaguely of the Sun Dance. In present days it has degenerated
among the Plains tribes into a brutal material thing, a degrading
exhibition of suffering and endurance of no spiritual meaning whatever.
But in the olden times it had been a thank-offering to the Great
Mystery, vowed to Him in memory of some special deliverance from
peril or certain death. But for the beneficent intervention of the
Great Mystery the man had lost his life; therefore all the original
symbolism of the Sun Dance was of a potential death and a resurrection
by the grace of the Great Mystery. But why should Honanta give this
Sun Dance at this late date, forty years after the massacre at Apache
Cave? Because some evidence of Honanta’s physical deliverer had come to
light, Sid reasoned. That, too, was necessary for the full ceremony to
be performed. If Honanta knew that that humane white officer’s name was
Colvin, his own part in the ceremony was obvious. What then of Hano?
Could he be destined for some heartrending sacrifice on Honanta’s part?
It was possible! Sid decided to rescue him, to get him out of Red Mesa
and send him to Big John for help, if he would go. He planned, now, to
find out where the medicine lodge was and then act when the time was
ripe.
Its location was shown him in the most unexpected manner.
“She was a wonderful woman--my mother!” exclaimed Honanta suddenly,
breaking his reverie and apparently continuing his narrative as if no
interruption had occurred. “She escaped with me from that ambulance by
night, for she had no wish to be brought a captive to the reservation
that was then being allotted to my people. In the mountains we lived,
together. She built a hut of sweet grass. She recovered from her
wounds, healing them with plants taught my people by the Great Mystery.
She fished and hunted like a man, carrying me always with her on her
back. She taught me to love and respect the birds, who live very
close to the Great Mystery. As I grew up, she taught me to know the
animals, our brothers; to sing chants for their souls when I had to
kill them for our needs. She taught me to reverence the bears, who
are our mother clan by the First Man. Silence, love, reverence--these
were my first lessons in life. Through her I learned to know the Great
Mystery. To pray daily to Him after the morning bath, silently, with
arms outstretched facing the sun, which is the most sublime of His
creations. To seek Him on the high places, alone. To see Him at night,
through the glory of the stars.”
Sid listened, waiting respectfully while the chief paused again, sunk
in reverie. As an ethnologist he was learning the true inwardness of
the Indian’s soul from a red man’s own lips. For some reason Honanta
seemed to have laid hold upon his sympathy and he now poured it all out
as to the first white man who really comprehended the fundamentals of
that marvelous Indian creed now lost to mankind forever.
“As I grew up, our broken-hearted people turned to Christianity. It
seemed to us the only thing the white man had which promised mercy
and hope,” went on the chief. “I went to a mission school. I learned
of Jesus--a man after our own heart! I read the Bible, which, please
remember, was written by men of my race, by men of the East--by no one
of your blue-eyed, conquering people who now dominate the earth. I saw
the white men preaching the Bible with their lips, but their lust for
money and power, their eternal buying and selling was always there.
I saw that their lives flouted the Bible at every step. I became
disgusted. I knew that the teachings of Jesus and our own ancient
religion were essentially the same. We used to _live_ those teachings,
too, long before the white man came. So I determined to return to our
ancient faiths and customs. When I became a man I wandered in all
desolate regions, seeking a spot where the white man was not. And I
found it. Here, in this forgotten and inaccessible stronghold, which
I named ‘The Arms of the Great Mystery,’ for they protect us forever.
Here I brought my mother, and as many of her clan as I could find. One
by one, they escaped from the reservation and joined me here. These are
all that are left of the great Yellow Bear clan of the Apache.”
Again came a silence. Sid felt strangely moved. He was torn between
his duty to Scotty, his friend, and his new sympathies for this hunted
band of a once free people in this their last refuge. For those copper
arrowheads had told him that there _was_ metal here; that Red Mesa
really had a mine, as was reported by the Papagoes. His friendship
for Scotty prompted him to find this mine and tell him its location
once he should escape. Yet, to destroy the peace of this last band of
the original red children of our country, to give over their last
stronghold to the lust and greed of the white miners who would surely
come here--could he do it, even for Scotty’s sake?
“And here my mother died, full of years and honor,” went on the chief.
“Come; I will show you!” He led the way out of the lodge. Along the
borders of the deep, blue-green waters of the tank a path led to the
substantial brush shelter built up in the interior juncture of the
two high red walls. Every pole and stick of it had evidently been
brought up from the surrounding desert, for no trees grew here, all
the available soil having been given over to cultivation. Inside the
house Sid saw all the ceremonial objects of the old-time Indian mystery
dances, marriage basket trays in intricate designs of black, white,
and red on the willow, baptismal bottle baskets made watertight by
piñon gum, medicine bundles filled with healing herbs. And, in one
particularly sacred shrine, the chief showed him a row of small bundles
which Sid knew at once were mortuary relics. They contained the hair
and perhaps a few mystic possessions of the dead of the tribe. The
first bundle of these was heavily decorated, as if all the women of
the band had lavished their art and symbolism in bead work upon it in
loving memory.
“My mother’s!” boomed the chief’s deep voice, laying his hand on it.
Sid removed his sombrero and looked reverently. After a time he let his
eyes wander around the dim recesses of the room. The chief remained
standing, lost in reverie before the reliquary bundle of his mother,
but Sid’s eyes searched for and finally found Hano, seated bound
against a post in a dim corner under the rocky walls between whose
fork the medicine lodge had been built. That there was a concealed
opening in this rock somewhere near which led to the cave tunnel up
which he had come the youth was sure. He examined the place keenly for
an instant, and then turned and stood awaiting the chief’s further
pleasure.
“My white son is interested in the ethnology of our poor people? Why,
then, does he come down here, around Pinacate, where there _are_ no
Indians?” asked the chief as they went out the door.
That was a knock-down poser for Sid to answer without time to think it
over! How could he disclose the real object of their trip--mining, the
seeking of this very Red Mesa mine? Yet he could not plead ethnology
as the purpose of _this_ trip! To lie, to evade, would be impossible
before those keen eyes that read truth unerringly. To lie and be caught
in his own trap by the wily chief would mean death, under the ancient
Indian customs under which this band lived. A murderer, with them,
might be pardoned, if he could show sufficient cause, but a liar was
always summarily dealt with, for no one in the tribe felt safe with him
who spoke with a forked tongue.
“I have a friend,” answered Sid, after a pause in which Honanta stood
with his eyes searching his to their depths, “I came with him. His
reason for visiting Pinacate is not mine to tell you.”
The chief smiled slightly. “It is good. Friendship of man for man is
our highest test of character. He who betrays a friend, even under
torture, is unworthy. How many of you are there?”
“Four,” said Sid. “One cowman guide, the white boy who is my friend, a
Navaho youth and myself.”
The chief looked relieved. Evidently he did not consider those three
out there somewhere in the desert particularly formidable, nor that
they could easily find Sid.
“Go, my young brother! You are free of our village. You cannot leave
it, for the entrance is well guarded. We shall wait until my old men
have spoken.”
Honanta turned and stalked back to his lodge, leaving Sid free to
wander at will. The youth at first regretted that he had not told the
whole truth about his party, that he had neglected to mention the most
important member of it--the dog, Ruler, who would surely track him here
just as soon as Big John and Scotty started back to look for him. They
would arrive at Red Mesa to-morrow morning, and, guard or no guard,
Ruler would lead them to that cave mouth! There was no doubt of his
own rescue. But it might mean a fight, might mean anything once Big
John arrived on the scene! And for Scotty, with his acute mineralogical
knowledge, to get one sight of Red Mesa would mean the end of the
Yellow Bear clan’s peaceful days. There were two things for him to do
now, Sid decided; to free Hano, and to escape himself--after which he
could think out what further steps to take.
Left to himself, Sid strolled around the pond under the high walls of
Red Mesa. He looked curiously at the small patches of maize, growing
in clumps very much as the Hopi plant them; at the borders of beans
and peppers; at squash plants that ran riot up the stone walls, growing
out of small crevices of soil in the rock. Every inch of soil was being
cultivated. As it was the dry season, great woolly clouds of lavender
and rose, empty of rain, were flying across high over the red ramparts
in the blue sky. A few squaws were irrigating the higher plants,
carrying up large jugs of water from the pond.
A little further on he came to a deep gorge, cleft in the high rock,
and Sid stopped, his heart beating swiftly. Here was the mine described
on that Red Mesa plaque! It ran like a fissure through the granite,
a wide seam of black lava trap, and with it was a vein of rich, dark
ore. Pure copper smelted out by the heat of the lava glinted a dull
black throughout the vein, and a still intenser black, gleaming with
points of white, told of native silver nuggets mixed with the copper.
It was a big lode. It swept downward, passed under the dirt path under
Cid’s feet and descended into the dim blue depths of the tank. Here was
Scotty’s mine, all right!
In it two Apache were working now, making arrow points at a primitive
forge up in the shadows of the cleft, blowing a welding heat on a
small pot fire with a bellows made of the skins and horns of the
mountain sheep. They looked at Sid curiously and one grunted an
exclamation in Apache at the other, but neither spoke to him.
Then there was a commotion in the village. A hunter’s song came deep
and resonant, from the depths of the medicine lodge. Presently there
emerged two stalwart bucks, bearing the carcass of the ram that Sid had
seen shot before his eyes that morning. The three arrows that still
stuck in his side identified him for Sid. In addition its body was now
gayly decorated with prayer sticks and symbolic feathers signifying
thankful remembrance to the Great Mystery who had given them this
food. All the village turned out rejoicing at the hunters’ song. From
the grass huts came squealing children, laughing girls, and lithe
young men, all sunburned black as negroes which gave Sid the idea that
most of them had been born here. The procession came shouting and
rejoicing along the path bordering the pond and then all followed the
ram’s carcass into a large lodge down near the open lower end of the
valley where evidently the old men of the council were to make the
appropriate prayer--“Spirit, partake!” the Indian grace--over the game
before dividing it among the band.
Sid watched them depart. It seemed to him that a good time to act had
now come. Honanta had not appeared. He was evidently in his lodge or
else in a vapor bath hut near the pond preparing himself for his Sun
Dance. One of the squaws had left her water jug standing by the brink
of the tank, and it gave Sid the solution of a problem that had been
troubling him for some time. He shouldered it and then walked swiftly
toward the medicine lodge. There was no doubt now that the opening to
the cave tunnel came out there, for out of it had just been brought
the slain mountain sheep. He got to its door unperceived by any one
and walked swiftly to the rear recess, his eyes rapidly accustoming
themselves to the gloom within.
“Hano!--Shall I free you?” he asked in Apache, as he groped his way to
where the young buck sat bound.
The Indian youth stared. If surprised at Sid’s speaking his own tongue,
he gave no sign. Then he shook his head.
“No: I await my father’s judgment,” he replied proudly. “An Apache does
not run away.”
“But listen, Hano,” said Sid, earnestly, “my people will surely come!
They have a hound dog who can track me here. They will be very angry
and there will be a fight. You are few, and my people are armed with
revolvers and repeating rifles. There will be many killed, and all for
nothing. But you can get by the guard down below. I cannot, without a
fight and perhaps killing one of your people. You must go. My horse
is tethered over at the foot of the mountain. Give him this water jar
for me; he must be crazy with thirst by now. Then ride until you find
my people. There are three; a big cowman, a boy like me, and a young
Navaho. I think they are at Papago Tanks. Tell them that there is
peace, and to come quickly.”
A long wait ensued while Hano considered.
“Besides, Hano--Mexicans are coming. We’ll need white men with rifles
if your home is to be defended,” urged Sid, playing his last card.
“My brother speaks wise words,” said Hano at length. “Cut, white
boy!--I go!”
Without waiting a moment more Sid drew his hunting knife and freed
the young Apache. Then with a delicacy that forbade him to take any
advantage of Hano’s escape to find the tunnel entrance, he turned his
back and waited. There was a faint rustling; then he turned around to
find Hano and the water jar vanished from the lodge.
CHAPTER VII
BLAZE
It was perhaps an hour after Sid and his Apache captors had gone by
that Blaze finally came to. The dog moaned feebly; then he tried to
rise to his feet. An aching, burning pain shot through his shoulders
and there came a sharp twinge as the arrow jerked loose from where its
point had stuck in the rock.
It galvanized Blaze to frenzied action. He could not know that that
arrow, passing through just above the spinal vertebræ, had temporarily
paralyzed him with the shock of its blow. All his doggy understanding
realized was that this awful thing burnt like a fire and must be shaken
loose at once. At first he thrashed about recklessly trying to break
it off or get rid of it, somehow, if rolling and plunging could do it.
Then he snapped at the arrow ends savagely, shearing off point and
feathers like the ends of a straw.
This spasm of frenzy ended in a mad bolt down the mountain in search
of Master. Big John was Blaze’s idol; the one human who knew everything
and always gave him the most glorious times of his life. When hurt
before, it had been always Big John, his man-partner of their hunts
who, strong and tender, had somehow made his hurts come well. Sid,
as Little Master was all right, but Blaze hardly gave him a thought
now, for this trouble was too terrible and he _must_ find Big John!
Trembling all over and yelping every time the arrow stub struck
against a passing bush, Blaze struggled on down the hill. The bone
tops of his shoulder blades rubbed against this inexorable Thing that
stuck tenaciously through the flesh above them and at every step they
hurt worse than grinding a raw bone. Again and again he felt himself
growing weak and giddy with the pain of it. Each stumble was to him
an agony of roaring and helpless rage. Heroic, stoical old Blaze, who
had fought bear and mountain lion times innumerable; been bitten,
slashed, mauled with clawed paws; who had lost one ear in a fight with
a timber wolf--he found this thing to be the most maddening of all
his experiences with pain. You could not fight back nor get hold of
it, after that first savage crunch of his jaws had bitten off all the
arrow that could be reached. It rode him thereafter like a spur that
never let up.
Blaze’s progress grew slower and slower. At times he would stop and
howl dismally for some one to come and help him. Then, after a grim and
expectant period of waiting, he would crawl on again, floundering and
tumbling down the steep flanks of the mountain. In time he reached the
plain, where they had started up after the ram. Here was Sid’s pinto,
and the animal whinnied eagerly for he was already thirsty and weary of
waiting for their return. Blaze’s nose led him back to the tracks of
the main party, where the familiar scent of Big John’s white mustang at
last smote his nostrils.
It put new heart into the dog. Master’s horse! Now we were getting
somewhere! He trotted on, enduring the pain in his shoulders stoically
until it faded to a general dull ache. Nothing brushed the arrow stub,
now. You went carefully around bushes and kept to the mustang’s trail,
avoiding all thorns and cats-claws. Several miles further on he came to
where the buck had been shot and butchered. The bones and pieces of raw
meat left behind smelt good, but Blaze was feverish and would not eat.
His doggy instincts told him to starve out that fever. What lashed him
most terribly now was the scourge of thirst. He had lost a good deal of
blood, although the arrow had cut nothing vital. Water! He _must_ have
it!
Big John and Scotty had ridden on toward Papago Tanks with the buck on
saddle after the kill. They had not waited for Sid, for it was their
custom when any one went off lone hunting not to expect him back before
nightfall. Blaze followed on after the white mustang’s tracks, sore and
weary, his tongue hanging out with thirst and a high fever raging in
him. Oh, to find Master! _He_ would know! He would get him a canteen
or something! To drink and drink and drink! To have cool strong hands
draw out this burning pain that seared his shoulders like a hot iron!
Only the indomitable courage of his breed kept him up. Blaze was a
thoroughbred. He did not know what a streak of cur blood was! Kootenai
Firebrand, Culbertson Rex, Champion Swiveller, all famous lion dogs of
the West, were among his forebears and they would not let him give up.
He staggered on, his feet wabbling crazily under him as the trail wound
on southward through a country of black lava cones all around him,
with vitrified and scoriated lava under foot.
Then Blaze stopped, for the horses had halted here. He looked wearily
up toward a huge cone that rose to the east of him. Up that way these
tracks led, and he must follow, too!
He arrived at the top, at last, and then gave a feeble yelp of joy.
Here Master had got down off his horse, and the smell of him was sweet
in Blaze’s nostrils! Below him stretched out a vast amphitheater, the
sandy floor of a deep crater that was half a mile across. Through a
gap in the opposite side the desert vegetation had come marching in,
species by species, saguarro, bisanga, choya, creosote bush, to spread
out on that wide floor three hundred feet below and cover it with green
dots of vegetation. Blaze looked down, his doggy heart sinking with
misgivings, for no one was down there. Could he _ever_ muster up the
strength to climb down into this thing? And where had Master come up
out of it again? Only one set of tracks led down here and the descent
was as steep as a chimney.
A wild, fresh odor decided him to attempt it. At his feet he snuffed
hoof tracks, small, pointed, with musky dew claws--a deer of some
kind, Blaze decided. He did not know that they were antelope, for
the smell was new to him, but at once the old hunting ardor surged up
in his soul, overriding weariness and physical pain. He attempted a
valiant bark, which sounded somehow hoarse and dry in his throat; then
he plunged down the steep declivity after the horses. Around him rose
high rim rock, red and purple and black. These two lava gaps were the
only places where the crater could be entered at all. They all had gone
down here; that was reassuring. Here, too, were Ruler’s tracks, that
four-footed companion whom Blaze secretly envied for his marvelous nose
and openly despised for his absurd caution in attacking bear and lion.
Here also was the smell of Indian, where Niltci had jumped off and led
his mustang down by the bridle. And here Master and the other Young
Master had dismounted and climbed down, side by side, their horses
following most unwillingly as their sliding tracks showed.
On the crater floor the party had separated and there had been
gallopings about in every direction. Blaze followed the white mustang,
for she bore Master, his beloved. Soon he came upon a long smoky
cartridge from the old .35 meat gun, and the mustang’s tracks veered
sharply over to the right. The smell of fresh blood came to Blaze’s
nose and he wabbled slowly out to the center of that vast volcanic pit
following the scent. A pile of entrails, shank bones, blood dried up by
the thirsty sands--that was all, for him, of the antelope that had been
shot here!
Blaze lay down, completely tuckered out. Without at least a drink of
life-giving water he could not go a step further. The assembling and
galloping tracks that led off up to that other gap told which way they
had gone out. He could _never_ make that ascent, now! Instinct told
him to wait until sundown, for it was hot and sultry down here now and
there was not a breath of air. He lay down, panting, consumed with
thirst. When he tried, later, to rise again he found that his wound had
stiffened and the whole top of his shoulders seemed one raw, immovable
lump.
He looked about him piteously, then raised his muzzle to the sky
in a howl of dismay. Silence, of the brooding desert; and then an
answer--the wild howl of a coyote! Blaze’s quick eye singled him out
sitting up there in the gap, watching him wolf-like. His answering howl
had not been of sympathy or anything like that, but to call other
coyotes to help him prepare for this feast of dog flesh!
The danger stiffened Blaze up and strengthened his moral fiber. A
savage challenge rumbled in his throat as he rose stiffly to his feet
and faced the coyote menacingly. Then a whine of pain came from him.
He could not fight, now; but he would not howl again for help, at any
rate! That signal was too well understood by these wild dogs that _had_
no master!
Blaze looked up at the coyote and then around him again. Should he
climb up there and fight this fellow, anyhow, weak as he was, before
any more of them came? He could never do it without, first, water! Then
his eye fell on a small round brown object lying near by on the sand.
He walked stiffly over to it and snuffed it. That thing was what his
men drank water out of! It smelt of the young master, too! Scotty had
forgotten his canteen during the butchering of that antelope and left
it behind, but all Blaze knew about it was that the thing smelt of him
and held water. He rolled it over with his paw. An enticing splash came
from inside. Instantly all that pent-up thirst torture burst out of him
in a frantic effort to get at the water inside. He took the canvas
case in his teeth and worried and shook it savagely. Of no avail! The
cork held tight, and the thing dropped on the sand, the water inside
tinkling maddeningly. Blaze stopped a moment to consider. This thing
was something like a bone, really! It _had_ a bone, of a kind, its
spout, sticking out one side. He lay down, with his paws on the body of
the canteen, and then began to chew and gnaw fiercely at the cork and
tin of the nozzle.
An Airedale’s jaws are the most formidable part of him. Those inch-long
tushes can give a frightful slash, and with them two of the big
60-pound western Airedales can pull down a mountain lion between them.
Blaze’s teeth closed on that canteen nozzle like crushing paper. The
metal gave; the cork squeezed. A savage pull on it, a shake that
would take the ear off another dog, wrenched it loose and broke away
the solder in its joint. A thin stream of water began to trickle out
through this crack as the canteen lay on the sand--and under it ran a
long red tongue, curved like a spoon, lapping up greedily every drop as
it flowed out!
After that Blaze felt better. He lay down awhile. The matted cake of
dried blood and hair around the arrow kept any flow from starting
again, even with fresh water making new blood in his veins. It was
getting cooler now. A huge circle of shadow began rapidly to creep out
from the west toward the center of the crater. The coyote had moved
down a hundred yards nearer. Another was singing his shrill song up on
the rim, and working around stealthily to join the first one in the gap.
Blaze got up, growling. He was very stiff and could only move those
shoulders by enduring intense pain, but immediate attack was his best
defense now, and he knew it. Steadily he climbed up the gap through the
river of desert vegetation that flowed down its slope. The coyote was
waiting for him, silent, crouched for a spring. His green oblique eyes
glared at Blaze menacingly, as he drew near--his teeth were bared in a
wicked snarl.
Blaze increased his speed, heading straight for him, snarling savagely.
The coyote was a little larger than he, but Blaze and Ruler had tackled
the great timber wolf together, and he was not in the least afraid of
him! At ten paces off he suddenly let out a volley of ferocious terrier
barks, vengeful with the fury of the lion, terrifying to the creature
attacked. Then he charged.
That coyote did not wait! That savage attack, even by a wounded dog,
was too much for his cowardly nature! There was a squeal, a yelp, a
bawl of pain as Blaze’s fangs laid open his shoulder to the bone--and
then a gray streak vanished through the creosotes so fast that nothing
but a greyhound could have overtaken him!
Blaze loped on, grim, dogged, determined. The sun was setting now, and
travel would be more endurable. Scotty’s canteen had given him new
life. He was going to win through to camp if he had to bring in every
coyote in the desert after him! The trail wound down around the flanks
of the crater and brought him back to the sands again. From there it
went on, mile after mile, while a grand and beetling mountain range
loomed up nearer and nearer.
Blaze felt himself growing weaker again. The sand had given way to the
most awful of broken black lava under foot, rough and sharp beyond
description. The horses had picked their way over it with difficulty;
to the weak and wounded dog it was a purgatory of toil and it took
every last ounce of strength out of him.
Darkness fell. Blaze could see fairly well in the dark, and he needed
to, here! Thorny ocatillas, devilish choyas and stunted bisangas that
were balls of sharp thorns outside, had to be seen and avoided if
he would save his eyes. Twice he lay down and gave it all up. Only
the steadily freshening scent of the white mustang’s tracks gave him
courage to rise again and keep on.
Then great walls of ragged black rock loomed up, dark and forbidding,
ahead in the gloom. It seemed the end of all things to Blaze. What in
all the world was he coming to! He stopped, shivering all over with the
sharp cold of the desert night. His wound ached unbearably. He lay down
puzzled, wearied at the mere sight of this hideous black rocky mass
ahead. It was perhaps the tenth time since leaving the crater that he
had done so. Blaze groaned and gave up the pursuit of Master in a final
disconsolate howl.
But this time the barking challenge of _another dog_ answered, sounding
faintly in his ears!
Blaze raised his head. Ruler! He knew the hound’s voice well! He got
up, yelped a hoarse, throaty cry and crawled on. Ruler’s challenge grew
more and more menacing and then there came the sound of men’s voices.
And then Master’s voice, ringing out, stern and vibrant: “Halt, thar!
Is that you, Sid?” it asked.
Blaze gave a joyful little moan and crawled feebly into camp, licking
humbly at Big John’s boots. Ruler, puzzled, snuffed over him, after
trying an abortive attempt at a romp. Then the water-hunger became
too strong for Blaze to endure longer and he crept on to where a tank
glimmered under the stars, a rock-bound pool in the lava, and there he
drank and drank and drank until his dry tongue could lap up no more.
* * * * *
“Stand back, fellers! Fotch hyar a light. No, Sid!--and somethin’s
happened to Blazie boy,” called out Big John’s voice in the dark.
Niltci stirred up the camp fire, and presently Scotty came out of the
boys’ green wall tent bearing a candle lantern.
“Well, I’ll be plumb teetotally _hornswoggled_!” roared Big John, as
the light fell on the back of the drinking Blaze. “Shore, he’s all
bloody! An’ he’s got a stick through his neck-- Come hyar, Niltci! We
gotto see about this! Sid’s shore got hisself into trouble--dern his
pesky hide!”
Niltci made his peculiar exclamatory noise and sprang over to where
Blaze still lay drinking.
“Arrow!” he pronounced after a moment’s inspection.
“Well, I’ll be durned!” grunted Big John. “Shore of it, Injun?” he
questioned incredulously.
Niltci nodded. Then, stooping and holding Blaze’s muzzle with his
fingers, he gave a quick yank which drew out the shaft. Blaze groaned
through his set teeth. His blood came in a stream and they were busy
for a short time getting a bandage on it. Then the Indian picked up the
arrow and examined it more closely.
“Apache!” he declared.
“No!” roared Big John. “_Cayn’t_ be, Niltci! They ain’t an Apache
between hyar and the White River country. I’m a gosh-durned fool, I am,
an’ proud of it--I’ve lost one of them ornery boys, an’ some one has
shot my dawg--but ye cayn’t hand me that Apache stuff, nohow!”
“Apache!” reiterated Niltci, with more emphasis. He pointed to the
blood grooves on the shaft in confirmation. All tribes make them in
their own peculiar spiral lines.
“What in the world’s happened to Sid, then, John?” queried Scotty, his
awed, scared face appearing in the circle of light.
“Search me, hombre!” grunted Big John. “You Blaze, ef you could only
talk, now! But fellers, we gotto set down a-piece and figger this
all out the best we kin. Sid ain’t back, but Blaze is; and with an
arrer into him. What does it all mean? I _told_ you I was a fool!” he
vociferated.
“Ruler’s the answer, John,” said Scotty, as they all went back to the
camp fire carrying Blaze between them. “We’ll put him on the back trail
right off and then we’ll know something.”
“Good haid, li’l man!” agreed Big John. “I’d do it, to-night, only we
jist cayn’t work them hosses over that lava in the dark.”
“Well, _I’m_ going to, now!--on foot, too!” said Scotty truculently,
his Scotch dander rising. “It’s only about three miles back to the
crater where we shot the antelope and I left my canteen. We’ll walk.
Suppose Sid followed our trail there and got ambushed by some wandering
Yaquis? You know how they hate the Mexicans. All whites look alike to
them.”
“Apache!” grunted Niltci stolidly.
“All right; Apache, then!” conceded Scotty. “Sid’s in trouble with
Indians somehow, and Blaze managed to get away and get here, with that
arrow in him. Niltci can stay here and look after him and the horses.
As for me, I can’t get back any too quick!” declared Scotty, with the
vibrant sympathy of youth in his tones. “Here, Ruler!”
“Hol’ on thar, Scotty! Yore fixin’ to miss three bull’s-eyes in a
row, thar, son. Of co’se I’m goin’, ef you are; so we’ll sorter git
organized, fust. Whar’s that rucksack? We-all mought be gone three
days, an’ Sid he’ll mebbe want medicines an’ bandages. By rights I
ought to take Niltci and leave you hyar, Scotty, seein’ as this is
Injun doin’s.”
But Scotty was obdurate. Start he would, that night, and, as some one
had to stay with Blaze and the horses, he insisted on it being Niltci.
That didn’t suit Big John, for in a raw iron land like this the Indian
boy was worth a dozen Scottys to him. The row gathered way, but you
might as well argue with one of the lava boulders around Papago Tanks
as try to convince a Scotchman!
“Wall, s’pose you and Niltci do this-yer pasear, then? An’ I’ll stay,”
said Big John, testily, by way of settling it. “Mind you don’t go
further’n that crater, though, an’ then come back an’ report.”
There being no further objections, Niltci and Scotty soon set off into
the night, leading Ruler on a slip leash. Overhead swung the brilliant
stars of an Arizona night, a glory of soft light in which crater cones,
rugged lava pressure ridges and stunted saguarros sticking up out of
the rocks showed dimly. Behind them the grand range of Pinacate rose
gloomy and majestic, the eternal cloud of sulphur vapor around its
summit blotting out a whole section of the star canopy to the south.
Niltci led on noiselessly, picking his way by eyesight that was as
good as a cat’s in the dark. They passed white smoke trees, ghostly as
clouds, in the darkness, growing in company with white brittle bushes
out of dry crannies in the lava that could hardly support a cactus.
An hour later they were toiling up the steeps of the crater once more.
So far, not even a whine of discovery had come from Ruler. Big John had
given them the hobbles of Sid’s pinto, to show the scent to the dog
when the right time came to try to make him understand what was wanted.
But Niltci himself knew the pinto’s tracks by some obscure difference
in the hoof-mark, and he assured Scotty that so far not a sign of Sid’s
horse had they come upon.
“He may have come down into the crater from the other gap, though,”
objected Scotty; “we’ll go down and get my canteen, anyhow.”
They climbed down into the vast coliseum of the crater. It was dark
as a well down there, and Niltci crept along on all fours, following
the pony tracks. He pointed out Blaze’s paw prints as they went. The
dog had been here, too, following their party of the afternoon. After
a time Scotty gave a yelp of discovery and pounced on a round brown
object lying on the sand.
“Here’s my canteen, anyhow!” he crowed. “I left it here after we
butchered the antelope.”
Then a cry of surprise came from him as he stopped dead and held out
the canteen to Niltci to examine. It was empty of water and the crooked
angle of the spout showed that it had been cracked open. “It was more
than half full this afternoon, I’m sure of that!” insisted Scotty,
excitedly. “Some one’s been here beside us--but why did he not uncork
it, then?”
Niltci looked it over keenly.
“Dog! Blaze do it. Him chew canteen. Him have come a long way,” was his
verdict.
He showed Scotty the dog’s tooth-marks and then replaced the canteen
where Scotty had picked it up. There the whole story written in the
sand was clear. Here Blaze, wild with thirst, had lain down with the
canteen under his paws and chewed at it until he had worried the spout
solder loose.
“Dog heap thirsty! Got arrow back in mountains, me think,” declared
Niltci.
“Back in the Pass? You’re right! That’s about five miles from here. I’m
game to walk it and find out something. First, though, Niltci, we’ll
climb up the other gap and trace Blaze out of it. He didn’t come out by
the east gap, that’s sure. Sid may have been hunting in some crater to
the east of us.”
They started up that long slope down which flowed the river of desert
vegetation. Their own tracks of the afternoon were here, and Blaze’s,
too. The certainty that he had simply followed them out that way and
then turned to the south became stronger as they climbed up. It was
settled as sure at the summit of the gap, where Blaze’s paw prints
showed that he had made the turn around the crater just as they had.
Scotty and Niltci stood side by side, holding in Ruler who was whining
eagerly now, crazy to go chasing the coyotes which were howling in the
desert all around them. The blood-and-scent story of that one which
Blaze had routed when he had attempted to bar his path had excited
Ruler, and he had got into his doggy mind the idea that coyote was
to be the night’s game. Otherwise this whole proceeding was still a
mystery to him!
Around them under the stars brooded a black and silent land, dead as
the surface of the moon, the wide, flat and parched plain of the lava
fields stretching away for fifteen miles to the east. Near by rose the
jagged edges of the Rainbow Range, ragged saw-teeth which would be red
and purple in the daytime. Now that range was barely distinguishable
under the faint light of the stars.
But, as they looked, suddenly a tiny point of fire shot up on the far
horizon to the east. It was high enough among the lower stars to surely
be on a mountain or crater of some sort, yet so tiny and far away as to
be almost indistinguishable in the desert haze.
“There’s Sid!” shouted Scotty triumphantly, gripping Niltci’s
buckskin-clad arm. “Now, how in the dickens did he ever get way over
there? And if so, why did not Blaze come in by _this_ gap?”
Niltci stared at the flickering point of light for some time without
replying. At times it died down to a mere red coal, so small as to be
lost to eyesight entirely. Again it would flare up and appear quite
strong.
“Mexicanos!” declared the Navaho boy at length.
“Mexicans!” echoed Scotty amazedly. “Why, that’s Sid’s camp fire,
Niltci. Isn’t it?”
“No. Fire, he was be on Cerro Colorado. Master Sidney, him no have go
_there_!” answered Niltci.
In a flash Scotty saw that he was right. For no conceivable reason
could Sid have gone that far distance to climb Cerro Colorado again.
No; he had gotten into some sort of adventure with some wandering
Indians back near the Hornaday Mountains, that was sure. Blaze’s tracks
all argued that. The dog had got away, wounded, and had followed their
own tracks to camp, step by step.
Meanwhile, what of this Mexican camp fire on Cerro Colorado? It could
only mean one thing: Vasquez had taken the train to Nogales in Mexico;
had assembled a band of guerrillas; and they had ridden west by Sonoyta
and Santo Domingo along the Sonoyta River, and now had climbed Cerro
Colorado--for the same reason that Scotty and Sid had--to find Red Mesa!
And they had been disappointed. What would their next move now be?
Scotty quivered with excitement all over as a possible solution of that
question now came to him. Suppose the Mexicans were to push straight
across this lava field for Papago Tanks! It was only fifteen miles in
an air line. Bad going across the lava, but the Hornaday party had done
it, and these Mexican riders could get across in just three hours after
daylight!
Vasquez was not the man to give up a mine like Red Mesa without
scouring this country for it, and Papago Tanks would be his natural
base for such an expedition, Scotty argued to himself. These guerrillas
would be upon them, then, by noon to-morrow! And meanwhile they
themselves were now on the wrong side of the border. It was a case of
get out, and get out quick! But where to? One thing was certain: Sid
was back somewhere near the Pass. Their whole party must “roll their
freight,” as Big John would say, back there early next day, and leave
no tracks behind them at Papago Tanks.
Tracks! They had left a million of them, written plain in the sands,
and there would be no rain to wash them out for a whole season yet. The
more Scotty thought it over the more certain he was that F-I-G-H-T! was
sure to be the outcome of all this!
“We’ll get back to camp, right sudden pronto, Niltci!” he cried.
“Mexicans is right. That’s Vasquez and Company, you bet! Le’s go!”
CHAPTER VIII
HANO
Bearing the water jug for Sid’s pony, Hano descended that sulphur-fumed
tunnel up which he had led the white boy not three hours before. It
was now late in the afternoon; it would be nightfall before he could
find the horse and ride. At the cave entrance one scout was on guard, a
young fellow like Hano himself, not yet twenty. He rose respectfully as
the chief’s son came by.
“Ai, Hano!” he greeted, for he had heard nothing of the disturbance up
in the village. He did not remark on the water jug nor question Hano
about it, for such would have been contrary to his whole training. Only
squaws asked idle questions.
Hano nodded and went on out. No one saw him from the lava basin brink,
for the entire band was gathered in the council lodge for the sheep
meat distribution. He climbed up the mountain side, following his
original course downward with Sid, and soon disappeared over the ridge.
From there Hano began tracking Sid over on the Pass side. He noted
with some surprise that the dog was now gone, but that did not matter
much. Hano’s face was set in a brown study of thought. He resembled
his father, Honanta, strongly. The face was young and keen, with the
high bony cheeks and the hard, thin facial muscles of youth, but it
would acquire the same fullness as Honanta’s with growing years.
Indianlike, Hano was considering, not his own personal interests but
his duty toward his tribe. To aid them he had broken his honor--that
honor which required him to await the judgment of the old men even
if unbound and free to go. It was repugnant to him to take the step
because of Sid’s words, but his duty to the tribe was paramount. The
main thing, as he saw it, was to keep _all_ these white men from ever
discovering Red Mesa--The Arms of the Great Mystery. The white boy had
spoken of Mexicanos coming. Hano knew them. Occasionally, not often,
small parties of them had visited this region. They usually came by
the Sonoyta River, following it until it lost itself in the sands to
the south of Pinacate. From there they generally went to Represa
Tank, from which the Camino del Diablo led them safely away from the
mountains of Red Mesa. Only once in a great while had the Apache found
it necessary to abolish one of these Mexican gentry who had become too
inquisitive.
The white boy had told him also of a hound which could track him to
Red Mesa. Hano doubted this not at all, for he had often heard in the
lodge, of a winter’s night, stories of the far-famed sagacity and the
wonderful tracking nose of this dog of the white man’s. He would like
to have a dog like that himself for tracking mountain sheep. To capture
or to kill him was one of the things that Hano decided to attempt.
Thus far Hano’s plan had reached only the point of determining to watch
both parties and to act for the best. If one party of whites killed the
other it would be a fine thing, for that would leave this white boy
alone in Red Mesa, and he would never be allowed to leave it alive.
Hano hoped that he would eventually consent to adoption into the tribe,
for he seemed a fine youth and his heart was good, too, or he would not
have remembered his pony’s thirst and brought that water jug.
His name, too, was in his favor. _Col-vin!_ How often had Hano heard
that name on his father’s lips when the story of that young white
officer of long ago had been told! It was a sacred name in the clan.
Because of it alone Honanta’s entire attitude toward this white youth
had changed, Hano knew, before he himself had been led away to the
medicine lodge. This young Colvin, too, had set _him_ free and begged
him to bring his friends to Red Mesa because the Mexicanos were coming.
That was all very well, but Hano decided that he would _not_ do that,
except as a last resort. Better let them all kill each other; then
there would be no one but the white youth to deal with.
By this time Hano had climbed down the mountain on Sid’s trail and
found the pony. It was after dusk, and the familiar plain of giant
cactus and creosote bush, of choyas and mesquites was dark in the
shadows cast by the surrounding mountains, but the pony, a piebald, was
easily distinguishable, picketed in a trampled ring of galleta grass.
He had scented Hano, for an eager whinny came from him and Hano met the
pony tugging at his lariat and thrusting out bared teeth and thirsty
lips toward him in dumb appeal.
Pinto drank the water in that jug down in one huge suck. Then Hano
untethered him, coiled the lariat and rode off, following his tracks
back to the main party. Darkness fell as he followed the pony prints to
the kill of the mule deer. Two hours of slow trailing under the stars
led him to the huge, bare craters where, up the eastern one, the tracks
now led.
Hano walked the horse up the steep slopes, listening in the dark
constantly for a sign of these other white men. He paused at the crater
edge and looked down. A vast mysterious black cistern was that crater
well!
Hano halted the pony and listened, for faint voices were coming up to
him from below. They were down there! Presently the _Hoo-ooo!_ of a
hound’s throaty challenge rang out. The dog was below and facing him,
Hano knew instinctively from the direction of that sound. He drew back
and waited. More voices; words in the white man’s tongue. After a time
he heard them climbing out slowly through the other gap. They stood on
the opposite brink, one voice talking excitedly, audible in the dead of
night even across the crater. Then they rode on.
Hano followed down into the dim cavern, crossed its sandy floor and
worked his horse up the opposite gap. There, far to the east, he
discerned a flaring watch-fire, over on the Red Tepee, as his tribe
called Cerro Colorado. So that was what these white men had become
excited about? he exclaimed mentally, as he watched the fire awhile.
“Ugh! The Mexicanos!--Those that the white youth told me of!” decided
Hano finally. As he watched, tiny flares began to move down the hill
and out northwards on the plain. Hano counted twelve of these lights,
moving slowly north apparently, though they were being carried by men
on galloping horses. Immediately he divined it. Those lights were
torches, carried by the Mexicans to see choyas ahead, and they were
moving for Represa Tank!
From there their next ride would be either up the Camino del Diablo
or--to his own mountains! And the white boy said they were coming!
What for, Hano did not know, but immediately all his plans underwent a
sudden revolution. This must not be! There were twelve of the Mexicanos
and only three of these other whites. The whole neighborhood from
here to the Pass was filled with pony tracks made by the white boy’s
friends. The Mexicans would be easily victorious over only three of
them, and then the tracks would lead them to----
His mind made up at once, Hano started the pony at once around the
crater in the direction the white men had just gone. To combine with
them, to bring them to Red Mesa and have their help in defending
his home was his people’s only salvation--just as that white boy,
Col-vin--blessed name!--had said.
But to ride on into a strange camp was entirely against Hano’s Indian
training. It might end in being shot or some other absurd mistake.
The thing to do, now, was to get in touch with this Navaho that the
white boy had spoken of. He was an Indian and both tribes spoke the
Athapascan tongue. Aided by the sign language they could understand
each other. The Navaho was the one to meet first!
Hano halted his pony. He could not be very far behind these whites now.
He sent out his voice in the challenge of the big-horn ram, for he
knew that the Navaho would understand that unnatural voice in the dead
of night as a signal. Then he waited, his eyes alert, ears listening
eagerly.
The bellow of a hound far ahead was his first reply. Then silence,
profound and unbroken. After a short wait a man rose suddenly out of
the ground before him. He pointed a rifle full on Hano: “Who are you?”
he demanded in Navaho.
“Friend!” replied Hano, giving the peace sign.
The Navaho did not lower his rifle. “That pony? Where did you get him?”
he asked sternly.
Hano explained rapidly in Apache, much of which the Navaho understood.
He had scarcely time for more when the swift click of hound nails and
the angry bellow of Ruler came out of the night. The dog rushed up
toward Hano, barking savagely, tugging along Scotty who was holding
back with all his strength on the leash. To a dog all strangers are
enemies!
“What’s all this, Niltci?” queried Scotty--“Good Lord!”
He stopped astounded and stared up at what was evidently a strange
Indian on Sid’s horse.
“Apache!” said Niltci. “Him come from Master Sid. Say all right. Must
come quick.”
“Is Sid hurt?” asked Scotty grimly.
“No. Him with Apache. Wants us to come quick,” reiterated the Navaho.
“Well, I’ll be darned! Keep your eye on him, Niltci--it may be some
damned ruse. We’ll take him in to see Big John and see what _he_ says
about it,” decided Scotty.
Walking on each side of Sid’s pinto, with rifles poised and ready for
any treachery, they took Hano back to the camp at Papago Tanks. Big
John roused out at their coming and threw a heap of brush on the fire.
“Jeemently-ding!--what you got thar!” he called out as the party came
in. “An Injun on Sid’s pony!--whar’d ye git him?--Say, fellers, I’m
just sufferin’ for the news!”
Scotty told him all Niltci had been able to learn from Hano during
their march and then added the tale of their own discovery of the
Mexicans.
“Shore’s a fine mess you’ve got yore old uncle inter!” grinned Big
John. “Them greasers is on Cerro Colorado, you say? Waal, _we_ left our
tracks on thet li’l hump, too! If it’s that Vasquez, he’s followin’ ’em
now--to see whar we went next, sabe? He won’t make fer these here lava
diggin’s nohow; he’ll make for Represa! An’ he won’t lose no time over
it, either! Then they comes inter the Pass, same’s we done. We’ll meet
’em thar, plumb bright an’ early to-morrow morning. They’ll be ridin’
all night. Thet fire ye saw on Cerro Colorado was jist a guide for
night ridin’.”
Hano nodded in confirmation. He told Niltci now that he had seen lights
moving north across the plain before he left the crater rim.
“That settles it!” exclaimed Big John. “We rolls our freight out’n
hyar right sudden pronto! An’ it’s goin’ to be a sweet fight, if we
don’t git up into the mountains before that bilin’ of greasers comes
a-fannin’ and a-foggin’ through the Pass, old-timer!”
Dynamic was that decision of Big John’s! The tent came down in a jiffy;
the horses were roped and saddled; Blaze was made comfortable up on
Sid’s pony, a bed being built for him of every available blanket piled
on the folded tent for a base. With Hano leading off through the dark,
the cavalcade started at once back across the lava.
The horses’ shoes clinked on its flinty surface; ghostly desert
vegetation and tumbled masses of petrified lava bordered their trail.
After several hours of careful riding came the huge cones of the
craters, moving by like grim phantoms past them as slowly light began
to dawn in the east. Ahead they saw spread out before them the jungled
garden of the Pass, its green poles of saguarros standing silent
sentinels all about in the dawn and the gray mountains hemming it in
all around.
“Now, fellers, we cayn’t take them hosses promiscuous up no mountains,
an’ I ain’t goin’ to leave old Blazie, nohow!” declared Big John as he
halted the train. “This white mustang’s about as easy to hide here as a
Saskatchewan swan! Thar’s shore goin’ to be some perishin’ lil’ rodero
when them spiggoty gents arrives in our midst! Two of us hev gotto stay
with these hosses.”
To hide them somewhere was the first thought of all. Big John’s
puckered eyes searched the Pass for cover. Up ahead the mountains
closed in to a narrow gap resembling a gunsight, a lone green saguarro
upstanding in the center like a front sight in its V-notch. A small,
bare rocky hillock to the right of the notch rose opposite a similar
low spur terminating the range on their left. But down under the flanks
of both of them they marked the high bushy green of mesquite.
“A feller _might_ lay low in thar hoss an’ all,” declared Big John,
sizing it up.
Scotty did not answer. He was scanning the mountain sides which towered
above them, mile on mile, shaggy and gray and covered with pale green
desert growth to a high skyline above. Somewhere, over beyond that
ridge maybe, Sid was in camp with the Apache. Either Hano or Ruler
could lead him up there. But a peculiar telepathic influence kept
whispering to him that all was not right with Sid, that he needed him
_now_, was in some sort of danger or trouble. It might have been just
his own imagination; it might have been the subtle mental bond between
the two chums, but the impulse was there and it led him to decide on
climbing up at once.
“You take Niltci and the horses and go to the notch, John. If the
Mexicans come in that way you can let them go by and then slip out
through the gap and ride around the end of these mountains and join
us. Meanwhile this Apache and I will climb up straight over the range
to their camp. I have a hunch that it’s over that mountain somewhere.
Here’s where we last saw Sid.”
“Looks that way--’scusin’ that the Injun’d knife ye as soon as he
got you alone up thar! I ain’t trustin’ no Injun. Crooked as a Mex.
gambler’s deck, they be!” swore Big John emphatically.
Hano listened and watched them pointing, uneasily. He wasn’t at all
sure about showing these people Red Mesa after all. He had been
reasoning over it silently as their party had ridden along. He had a
new plan, now, and it was this: Here were four good horses. A number of
Mexicanos, a dozen at least, were coming here after these white men.
Well, then, would it not be the best service he could do for his tribe
to induce them to lead the Mexicanos on a wild race out into the Tule
Desert along the fearful Camino del Diablo, there to lose them all
somewhere in the desert? He might die of thirst himself in the attempt.
That was nothing; the peace and safety of his tribe was everything--any
scheme to lead them all away from Red Mesa! These white men certainly
could never survive that desert!
He now grunted eagerly and began to speak earnestly to Niltci in mixed
sign language and Apache. He pointed to the notch and made the sign
of four horsemen with his fingers straddled over his left hand. He
pointed to Blaze and made signs of concealing him in some dense cover.
Then he pointed to the notch again and gave a pantomime of their party
galloping through it with other horsemen in pursuit.
“I got ye, son!” grinned Big John. “We-all give ’em a desert race,
hey? A-1 idee!” he chuckled. “Scotty, if I know human natur, that pisen
spig, that Vasquez”--Big John spat it out like a curse--“ain’t told
them guerrillas nothin’ about no mine. Stolen church property’s what
they think they’re after. They’ll be considerable peeved, an’ will
begin shootin’ soon’s they sight us. Now if this Vasquez starts gittin’
careless with his hardware--an’ I git one good poke at him with the old
meat gun--Sho!--there won’t be nobody know _nothin’_ about that mine
but us, see? Another thing: when he climbs Cerro Colorado and don’t see
no Red Mesa, what does he do? Thinks he’s disremembered what he read on
that Dago tablet, sabe? He’ll think I’m Sid, sabe, an’ he’ll chase us
clar to Yuma, aimin’ to get hold of it again. We don’t want him ’round
hyar, that’s sure! I’m strong fer the Apache’s racin’ scheme. Hyar’s
one big chance to lose him good, savvy?”
“How about Sid?” objected Scotty.
“Oh, he’s all right! Thick as thieves with these Apaches, I’ll bet. He
talks their lingo, you know.”
Still the feeling remained persistent in Scotty’s mind that all was not
right with Sid. Where _were_ these Apaches, anyhow; and why had Hano
not taken them to their encampment at once?
“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed at length. “You leave Ruler with me. Go on
with Niltci and the Apache and try your race stunt. Meanwhile I’ll slip
away, put Ruler on Sid’s track, and so find out where he’s gone myself.”
“Not so good, son! Not so good!” approved Big John whismically. “You
sorter hang back, then, an’ git away when you kin. Try along the base
of them mountains. I think Sid rode off that way when he left us. You
leave them greasers to us! They won’t bother you none! C’mon, fellers,
le’s get movin’. We ain’t got _all_ the time there is!”
Through Niltci he signified assent to Hano’s plan. They started across
the sands for the notch which now lay in plain daylight before them
glowing with the colors of the rising sun. Gradually the three ahead
urged their ponies to a gallop, twisting and turning through the
patches of choyas and spiny barrel cactus.
Scotty fell behind, Ruler on his leash loping along beside him. As
dense groves of mesquite barred their path he let himself get separated
from the others and worked over toward the mountain base, keeping
cover constantly between him and the party ahead.
In five minutes Scotty was completely lost to them. After a time he
came upon lone pony tracks in the sand. Beside them had trotted Blaze’s
footprints. Here was where Sid had gone toward the mountain. Sheep
hunting, no doubt, Scotty conjectured, for he knew that Sid liked to
hunt alone. Nearer and nearer came the abrupt flanks of the mountains.
Steep and rugged, rising in towering masses, the rocky flanks rolled up
high above Scotty. Somewhere up there Sid had climbed, he was sure.
Presently he came upon a game trail, winding along in the sand around
the rocky outcroppings. Sheep tracks! Scotty rode on hurriedly now, the
hunting ardor rising within him. Presently he came to a little patch
of galleta grass, trampled down in a ring around a picket pin, where
a pony had fed. The story was plain to Scotty. Sid’s pinto had been
tethered here and had broken away after a time, probably because of
thirst.
No; the Apache had _taken_ him away, for here were his moccasin prints!
Here were Blaze’s, too, coming from the mountains. It became more and
more a puzzle to Scotty. What had really happened to Sid? It looked
more than ever like treachery--foul play--to Scotty. Somewhere up on
the mountain Sid had encountered the Apaches perhaps. He had been held
by them, since he had not returned. But Hano had been here and had
taken his horse. What did it all mean?
For a time Scotty hesitated, thinking seriously of riding after Big
John to bring him and Niltci here to get their judgment on this
discovery. Then he saw the firm heel print of Sid’s hunting boot
leading up the mountain side. The ardent impatience of youth at once
overwhelmed him. Follow, and at once, he must!
He put Ruler’s moist nose to the print: “_Sssuey_, Ruler!--Go get
Sid!--_Sid!_” he hissed in the dog’s ear.
Ruler whined eagerly. Then, snuffing the trail, he climbed on upward,
his bony rat tail swinging in circles as occasional yelps of discovery
came from him. Scotty climbed after and was soon high in the rocks on
the mountain flank, with the green plain of the Pass spread out far and
wide below him.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Big John and the two Indians had ridden on swiftly. The Pass
narrowed and in ten minutes more they were at the base of the two low
hills guarding the gap. Hano looked around him inquiringly.
“Where is the white boy?” he asked Niltci, anxiously.
“Oh, he’s back thar a-piece--he’s a slow rider,” laughed Big John
reassuringly. Hano regarded them suspiciously a moment as Niltci
translated. Then he shrugged his shoulders, his keen eyes searching the
groves of mesquite and palo verde for signs of the laggard. A bed was
made for Blaze under the shelter of a dense bunch of creosotes and he
was tied there with a pan of water handy. Then the horses were tethered
in hiding behind that growth of mesquite under the rock base which they
had noted from down the Pass. Niltci and Big John unlimbered their
rifles and climbed to a vantage point on the low rocky spur jutting out
to the east of the main range.
They were not many minutes too soon! Over the waste of sand dunes to
the north a small white cavalcade was toiling slowly along toward them.
The guerrillas, about a dozen of them, they noted, were riding two by
two. They were clad in white, with huge white sombreros on head and the
shining bands of cartridge belts crossing their chests at a slant.
Over their backs jutted up the slender muzzles of Mausers. Dandy black
boots heavily spurred in silver gleamed through the dust along the
flanks of their horses. At the head of the column alongside the leader
rode a man clad in a striped serapé, and at sight of him Big John’s
eyes began to smoulder.
He pointed him out to Niltci. “Thar’s that Vasquez, the pisen, ornery,
li’l horned toad that’s makin’ all the trouble, Niltci!” he growled.
“The mine ain’t wuth shootin’ nobody fer, though. We’ll hev to throw an
all-fired scare into him with a leetle fancy shootin’, sabe?”
Niltci grunted understanding and they both watched the cavalcade
approaching. As they entered the Pass below, Hano’s wild eyes glared
up at them. Now was the time for his great sacrifice! In just a little
while longer these Mexicans would be through the gap and nearing those
mountains whose secret he felt bound to protect. They must never be
allowed to remain here, to trace out those tell-tale tracks! He looked
up at Big John for the signal to dash down to the ponies and begin that
race that could only end in the arid wastes of the Camino del Diablo.
Once out there, they could shoot him with those long-range rifles
if they were able. But die of thirst they all surely would! As for
himself, he trusted in his desert knowledge to survive until it would
be safe to return to Red Mesa.
But, alas for the best laid plans of mice and men! Nature has a grim
way of playing tricks that upset our best schemes--cruel tricks,
sometimes. For, hardly had the Mexican riders gotten well through
the gap with yells of delight as they followed the trail into that
beautiful desert garden, when, from up on the high mountain flanks
behind Big John’s position, came a sudden rolling of stones bounding
down the hill. The Mexicans all halted and looked up, shouting to each
other eagerly. Big John looked around inquiringly, and Hano gazed with
an expression of anguish in his black eyes. Up there ranged a band of
mountain sheep! A large band, seventeen in all, if any one had stopped
to count them. Rams, ewes and young ones, they were all clattering
along the summit of the ridge, outlined clearly against the sky and
headed for the fastnesses of the higher slopes.
At sight of them eager cries came from all the Mexicans. They began to
dismount hurriedly. Rifles were unslung, cartridges hastily torn from
the bandoliers. Then a wild race began up that mountain after those
doomed sheep.
Hano gave a grunt of dismay. That chase could only lead to one
thing--the immediate discovery of Red Mesa, the hiding place of his
tribe that lay beyond those ridges!
CHAPTER IX
THE SUN DANCE
Sid whirled swiftly, after Hano had gone. The slight swaying of a
medicine skin--the pelt of an albino big-horn--told him where the
opening to the tunnel was. Lifting it aside, a jagged hole in the lava
showed, and from below came up a faint tinge of sulphur smell. Sid
thought first of going down into the tunnel and hiding in it somewhere,
watching his chance to escape. Then he decided against it. He ought to
give Hano all the time he could. That _both_ of them had disappeared
would be immediately noticed in the village. He looked around, thinking
rapidly about what to do next. A bundle of plumed prayer sticks among
the ritual appurtenances of the lodge caught his eye and it gave him
the idea he was searching for. Going outside the lodge and closing its
door, he secured it with a prayer stick. That sign would signify that
the lodge was closed to all but medicine men and would keep out any
casual stroller.
It was now nearly sunset. Sid sought out Honanta again but he was not
at his lodge. Sounds of busy life came from the grass huts. Fresh meat
of the ram was being prepared for an evening feast; more of it was
being hung on drying poles to cure in the sun. A knot of young braves
was playing the hoop game, rolling the hoop swiftly along a path and
striving to pierce it with lances as it sped.
Sid watched them awhile, a feeling of melancholy growing on him. These
people were happy, free, and independent. Under Honanta’s leadership
they were living life simply and nobly, as the early Indians did.
To match it, you had to go back two hundred years to the time when
religion was everything in an Indian’s life, when warfare was an
incentive to chivalry similar to our own warfare of the middle ages;
when there were no white men to set one tribe against another, to teach
them to scalp one another by offering a bounty for the hair of a fellow
red man, or to sell them whisky and weapons far more deadly than any
they naturally used.
Sid felt himself playing traitor to his best instincts when he thought
of what the coming of Scotty and Big John would mean to these people.
Scotty had come to the Pinacate region to find the Red Mesa mine. Well
he, Sid, had found it for him! But he had not dreamed to find it also
the home of a happy and peaceful band of red men--that race with which
Sid was becoming more and more in sympathy.
But now look what would happen! Scotty would claim the mine, stake
it out, ask him and Big John to sign as witnesses, and then file the
claim with the government. And then, with the publishing of that
claim, would come the inevitable stampede to this region. White men,
hundreds of them; ships, rails, ore cars, burros, rough and sweating
white miners--a rabble that would sweep Honanta and his people away
like chaff. It did Sid little good to tell himself that he had sent
Hano to bring his friends so that they could defend Red Mesa against
the Mexicans. That would be a mere incident in the march of progress.
Vasquez and his guerrillas would surely come here, riding along the
border from Nogales. They would find the pony tracks, climb the
mountain and discover Red Mesa. After that, no doubt Vasquez would
fight for it. But even if defeated and driven off, there was Scotty to
be reckoned with, for his heart was set on this mine, his whole future
depended on it. That he would insist on providing for these Indians,
of course, would be his natural instincts for right and justice. But he
would insist, too, on the mine being developed. Sid doubted whether it
could be done, in the nature of his race, without first bringing about
the destruction of these Apaches. Honanta would never give this place
up without a fight for it against all comers.
Sid wished that his father could be here to counsel him. He had almost
a conviction that he was really that officer who had saved Honanta’s
life in Apache Cave so long ago. It would be just like him. That deed
would give his father vast influence over the chief, and some way out
of this tangle of perplexities would be found by the good old Colonel.
Sid wished now that he had sent Hano direct to bring his father. The
Colvin ranch was up in the Gila Cañon on the railroad not a hundred
miles away. The name was already well known in Arizona, their station
near the ranch being named “Colvin’s” on the main line. Hano could have
reached the rails by a fast push out to Tacna, and then have taken the
train to Colvin’s. That would bring the Colonel here in two days at
most, for there was a railroad to Ajo Mines only fifty miles away from
Pinacate.
But it was too late now. After-thought is mere aggravation! What would
Hano really do, now that he was free? Sid asked himself. He confessed
he didn’t know. We know nothing of the Indian mind and its workings. We
really know nothing of the race nor where they came from. Not Semitic,
surely, for, Phœnician Jew or Arab, the accumulation of vast stores of
wealth is the dominant Semitic trait, and the Indian scorns wealth and
miserliness alike.
Sid was convinced that they are of the same Aryan stock as ourselves.
If so, his theory was that they must have migrated east from Asia
at a far earlier period than our own ancestors’ westward migration,
for we still have the Aryan word roots, while in America there are
no less than three great Indian languages--Algonquin, Athapascan,
Siouan--totally different, the peoples also as different in physical
and moral characteristics as are our own Teutonic and Latin branches of
the same Aryan stock.
We developed individualism as we migrated westward. The Indian
developed it, too, in this great new land, but he retained one
distinctive Asiatic trait--the impersonal ego--the sinking of self in
the clan whose interests are always paramount to everything else.
Reasoning from that, Sid tried to conjecture what Hano’s motives would
be. To keep _all_ these whites, Mexicans and his own friends alike,
away from Red Mesa, the home of his clan; to kill Ruler, the tracking
dog, so that Sid could not be traced here, seemed to Sid what Hano
would really do. He would act on that basis, Sid was sure. His own
chance of rescue, then, was really very slight. His life was safe for
twenty-four hours, no matter what the old men might decide in council.
After that his fate really depended solely on the identity of his name
with that Colvin of Apache Cave! But how to prove to Honanta that that
man was Colonel Colvin himself? To claim it without proof would be
taken by the Indians as a mere forlorn hope to save his own life. Hano
could have brought that proof for him, given time enough; now it was
too late. Sid gave it all up; there was really nothing to do but wait
events.
The sun was setting as Sid finished his ruminations. The water pool
already lay in shadow, the black bottom of its lava basin turning the
deep blue-green of its waters to a mirror of shining black. A sharp
shadow line was creeping in horizontal masses of dark maroon far up on
the face of the east wall, every broken fissure and pinnacle of the
west wall shadow etched on its high face. Sid kept one eye nervously on
the door of the medicine lodge, wondering how it was all going to turn
out. No one had visited it yet, but discovery of Hano’s escape was sure
and would come soon.
As Sid waited and watched, Honanta came out of a sweat lodge near the
borders of the tank. He was naked save for breech cloth and moccasins,
and slowly he walked to the brink of the lava basin where it tumbled
out between the high walls of Red Mesa. Like some magnificent bronze
statue he stood for a time on the brink, facing the setting sun, his
arms outstretched in silent prayer. Then an old man tottered out from
the council lodge bearing a ceremonial pipe. Honanta took it from him
and, after a few whiffs, held its bowl toward the setting sun. Again he
dipped it reverently toward Mother Earth and the sunset ceremony was
ended. Sid noted that he did not add the modern symbolism of offering
the pipe to the four winds.
After him every brave in the tribe, down to the little boys of eight,
stood and did the same thing, that act of reverence to the Earth and
Sun, the most important of the creations of the Great Mystery, which
ethnologists often stupidly report as sun worship, earth worship. But
Sid knew that, like their nature worship, it was really reverencing
the Great Mystery through His creations. He had long ago adopted that
viewpoint as his own, and was about to share in the ceremony himself,
claiming the privilege as an adopted Blackfoot, when a soft footfall
along the path drew his attention.
The girl Nahla was approaching the medicine lodge! She bore food and
water for her husband, the prisoner. Sid felt tingles of excitement
running all through him as he rose and walked rapidly after her.
“Nahla!” he called, as soon as they were far enough away from the rest
of the village to be alone.
The girl turned and faced him.
“Do not enter!” he said softly in Apache.
“Oh, have they killed him?” she almost shrieked. “_Hai_--I hate you!”
Like a fury she faced the bewildered Sid. It was his first experience
with women--the instant feminine jumping to conclusions, the fierce
and unreasoning hate for the cause of her sorrows.
“No. He lives; but do not enter the lodge, I beg you. You must trust in
me, Nahla!” said Sid earnestly.
The girl shrugged her shoulders scornfully. “Pah! And is my husband to
go without food and drink!” she spat out. With a lithe, sudden dash she
had reached the lodge door and put her hand on the plumed prayer stick
that held it shut.
Sid leaped after her. “No!” he barked. “Listen, Nahla--Hano is gone! I
freed him. I sent him. They do not know, yet.”
The girl turned about, suspicion burning in her black eyes. “_You?_”
Rapidly anguish filled her whole expression, then anger. “You made him
run away!” she accused. “You made him break his honor--you, white man
with a serpent’s tongue!”
With a swift movement she withdrew the prayer stick and flung wide the
door. Unmindful of Sid’s expostulations she stood for a moment looking
inside. Then she turned and ran shrieking toward the huts. “Hano!
My Hano! He is gone! He has broken his honor! The white man freed
him!--Honanta! Honanta!” she cried, running along the path.
Sid looked after her helplessly. Honanta was stalking toward her as
fast as his dignity would permit. They stopped and exchanged a few
words. Sid braced himself for what was coming, hoping that his wits
would save him this time.
Honanta came up to him, his face a dark thundercloud, angry lines
seaming it. “What is this, white boy?” he demanded.
“I freed Hano, chief. I had a good reason for it. You must trust me,”
replied Sid, as stoutly as he could in the face of that towering
passion.
“Yes?” said Honanta, craftily, controlling himself. “Why?” He was
speaking in Apache now, and so was Sid, the subterfuge that he did not
understand it being abandoned by both.
“You shall learn, soon, chief. I am acting for the good of us all,”
said Sid earnestly.
Honanta studied him awhile in silence. “My son, because your name is
Col-vin I have persuaded my old men to spare your life. My heart tells
me that you may be the son of that officer who spared my mother and
me--whose name also was Colvin. In freeing Hano I believe that you
meant well. But it is dark to me why _my_ son, Hano, consented to run
away! His honor required him to await the judgment of my old men, even
if not a thong bound him.”
“He, too, did it for the sake of the tribe, Honanta,” declared Sid with
profound conviction.
Honanta knitted his brows, puzzled. “My son,” said he gently, “is
not the truth best? No--you do not lie!” he added hastily as a frown
gathered in Sid’s face, “but you know more than we do. I must tell what
you _do_ know to my old men, for they are very wise and their decision
is final. You have told me nothing that gray hairs can listen to, so
far,” he concluded persuasively.
Sid reflected. Would it not be better to tell the whole truth _now_ and
trust in Honanta’s judgment? He decided to tell part of it anyhow, for
Big John and Scotty might be led here by Ruler to-morrow, he felt, and
he might as well explain them now.
“I sent Hano to bring my friends here,” he replied. “They have a
tracking dog--a hound--and could trace me here in any event, so I
wanted to avoid a fight. The dog would lead them to Red Mesa, chief.”
“And so you sent Hano!” laughed Honanta. “My son Hano would kill that
dog, kill those friends of yours, too, sooner than permit them to
reach our home! Did you not think of that?”
Sid attempted to show his surprise at this Indian point of view on his
action, but the idea was not new to him and the chief saw it.
“Come! There is more back of it, yet, my son!” prompted Honanta. “The
truth--and I will do what I can for you with the elders.”
“There’s a party of Mexicans coming along the border,” replied Sid
desperately. “They will find our tracks and trace us all to this place.
I felt that we needed my friends to help you defend it, Honanta. That’s
the whole truth.”
“Ha!--No! There is more!” exclaimed Honanta, his choler rising. “_Why_
are the Mexicanos coming? And why is your party down here? Do you think
I do not know why? Somehow, the tale of our mine has gotten out! Don’t
I know what white men will do to possess themselves of a mine? What
_won’t_ they do!” he exclaimed bitterly. “You are all our enemies!”
“Not I!” retorted Sid, stoutly. “I am an ethnologist--no miner! The
study of your people is my lifework, chief. Sympathy for them has
become my ruling passion. Since I came here, my one idea has been to
preserve this place forever as your home. I’ll seal my friend’s lips
forever about this mine----”
Sid stopped hastily, for he had made a slip that he had not intended.
It did not escape Honanta, however.
“No! _we_ shall do that!” he said grimly. “My son, you are an enemy to
us. You cannot help yourself. But, because of him who saved my mother
and you who represent him, I have vowed to give a Sun Dance to-morrow.
You must be present at it, for you are the physical evidence of my
deliverer. According to our laws of hospitality you have one sun of
immunity among us. But to-morrow, when his shadow reaches _there_,” the
Chief pointed to a great crack on the inside of the west wall--“you
must go forth--if you can.... As for your friends, we shall take care
of them if Hano does not!”
He turned and motioned to two of his braves. “Bind him!” he commanded.
“Medicine lodge!”
They stepped forward and seized Sid. In a very few minutes he found
himself seated, firmly bound to the very post from which he had freed
Hano but recently. The food Nahla had brought for Hano was fed him;
then the door was shut and he was left in the darkness of the lodge.
Sid reflected over it all as he sat, awaiting the long vigil until
morning. Escape was impossible. Not only was he bound cunningly to the
post so that any movement of even his hands was impossible, but two
Apache guards squatted near him, silent as specters but watching him
fixedly.
“Go forth--if you can!” had been Honanta’s last words. In them Sid
found his sole hope. Honanta was still his friend, but the logic of
the situation had been too strong even for him. But Honanta was more
than his friend. It was true, then, that Colonel Colvin was that white
officer! Honanta had said so at last. Through his father he owed a debt
that to an Indian is never paid. Honanta, too, was torn between two
duties--that to his tribe and that to Sid as the Colonel’s son. In the
subtle workings of the Indian mind there would surely be a loophole
for him, somewhere, by Honanta, Sid felt. It was for him to find and
utilize that loophole of escape. It would be something that would clear
Honanta’s conscience as regards his tribe, yet fulfill his obligation
to him as the son of the man who had saved his life.
What it would be, Sid could not imagine. He decided to keep his eyes
open to-morrow, alert to seize the opportunity whatever it should be.
Then, with the ability of youth to sleep anywhere and in any impossible
posture, his head fell forward on his chest and he was soon oblivious
of his and any one else’s troubles.
Next morning as he was led from the lodge, a notable change in the
village greeted him. A high Sun Dance pole had been erected during the
night, with a cross bar secured near its top. From the bar dangled two
effigies; the figure of a man and of a mountain sheep. Sid recognized
the symbol of it. The figure represented Honanta, dead but for the
intervention of the Great Mystery in the person of that white officer
who had spared his mother. The mountain sheep represented man’s
physical life, his principal means of sustenance, the gift of Mother
Earth, replacing the buffalo of plains ceremonies.
After a time Honanta appeared, nude save for his moccasins and breech
clout; his hair was disheveled, his body daubed with clay. He dragged
after him the skull of a mountain sheep, symbolizing the grave from
which he had escaped by divine intervention. As the eastern sun flamed
over the wall of Red Mesa, an old priest cut and scarified Honanta’s
chest, signifying the natural accompaniments of a physical death.
The rest of the tribe now formed in a line under the east wall and
faced him. Sid himself was placed opposite Honanta, standing alone. He
felt awed at the part he was taking--for he obviously represented the
instrument through which the Great Mystery had shown His favor.
Looking with fixed eyes on the sun, Honanta began the Sun Dance,
dragging the skull after him and blowing from time to time on a sacred
whistle which he kept pointed at the sun as it rose toward the zenith.
Sid watched him, fascinated. He was seeing the original Sun Dance,
the Indian symbol of death and resurrection, as it was before later
changes degraded it into a meaningless exhibition of endurance under
torture--about on the level with our own bull-ring and prize-fight
arena. How long the dance would keep up depended solely upon Honanta’s
physical endurance. He was not much over forty years of age, so he
would be yet in his prime, and his fervor would lead him to dance
before the Great Mystery until his sinews could work no longer.
Sid’s prayers went out to aid him. He liked to see a man give his best!
This humbling of the body was nothing repulsive, when one thought of
the exalted mood of that soul, engaged in an act of Indian worship
so far above our own milder and, let us say, more self-indulgent and
vanity-ridden forms of ritual.
An hour passed; two hours, while still the devoted Honanta maintained
the peculiar syncopated rhythmic dance of the Indian. Occasionally his
voice rose in a wild, high chant, relating the story of his rescue by
that white officer of long ago. He called on the soul of his mother to
witness; poured out prayers in thankful chants to the Great Mystery.
Sid watched, himself entirely in sympathy, the whole band of Apaches
gradually working themselves to higher and higher exaltation of
religious feeling. He hardly noted the passage of time until a glance
over to the west wall brought home to him with a sudden shock that the
shadow of the east wall had nearly reached that crack in the granite.
His time was coming soon!
Others had noticed it, too, for one of the elders spoke a word. With
a final invocation to the Great Mystery, Honanta slowly brought his
dance to a close. He tottered toward Sid, his eyes sightless, his hand
groping until it gripped Sid’s.
Sid felt a renewed fervor in that grip, but all Honanta said was: “My
son, guide me--for you must now go forth from us.”
One of the braves pressed Sid’s rifle into his hands. Leading Honanta,
Sid started for the medicine lodge. Young bucks and elders surrounded
them. They were fully armed and their faces expressed the grim
determination of the executioner. Sid guided Honanta to the outlet of
the tunnel and himself raised the medicine sheepskin.
“Careful, my father!” he warned courteously, putting Honanta’s hands on
the ladder post.
They descended, the tunnel filled with creeping warriors, ahead and
behind them. Sid could not see what chance there was for his life in
this! To whirl and shoot the instant his foot left the cave?--before
he could move, a flight of arrows would feather themselves in him! If
Honanta had a loophole in mind it must be provided soon!
But the party crept on down steadily. Then along each side of the cave
entrance the bucks parted and lined up with arrow on string. Sid drew
a long breath and stepped steadily to the entrance. Beyond that he
could not go, without death. Bows creaked as he turned slowly, to find
arrows drawn to the head upon him.
But Honanta was close behind him. “You must go forth, now, my son,” he
pronounced gravely.
Sid tensed every muscle in his body, intending to throw himself down
the lava crevice and then turn and shoot for his life. It was a forlorn
hope, but----
Two long, fringed, buckskinned arms closed slowly around him as his
foot lifted for the first step. Sid halted wonderingly--but the push of
Honanta urged him on:
“Go forth, my son--_and I will go with thee_!” whispered the chief’s
voice in his ear. “I cannot see thee slain! Let them shoot!”
Honanta’s own arms were around him now, his body protectingly between
him and the Apaches. _That_ was the way he had solved his dilemma!
Sid backed rebelliously. “No, chief! No! You must not!” he protested,
attempting to turn in the chief’s arms. The utter silence of
astonishment was all around them, the Apaches hesitating, arrow on
bow, utterly disconcerted at this sudden development.
“On! While there is time!” grated the chief’s voice. “We shall escape
to your people. They must never find Red Mesa. I trust you, my son, to
keep silence!” urged Honanta.
Sid nodded. Honanta had found the best way out of it all. They were
about to go on, letting the tribe decide as it would, when the distant
_Rrrraammp! Rrrraammp! Rrrraammp!_ of rifle shots coming from over the
mountain arrested them.
“Halt! It is too late, Honanta!” barked Sid. “Listen!”
A fusillade of distant rifle shots broke out; then the rapid,
continuous discharge of a repeating rifle.
“Ten shots!” said Sid. “That’s the Navaho’s Winchester, chief. Ours
hold only five. Those other shots are _Mausers_--not hunting rifles!
The Mexicans are here!”
He pushed Honanta back in the cave and then faced the Apaches.
“Warriors of the Apache, I must stay and fight with you!” his voice
rang out. “Those rifles are of Mexicanos, coming to take your home.
After it is all over you can do what you will with me. Is it peace?”
The Apaches nodded sullenly and lowered their bows. Without Honanta
they were leaderless.
“Let no one go out!” ordered Sid. “We need every man right here!”
CHAPTER X
THE DEFENSE OF RED MESA
As the Mexican rifles whipped and sang in the crags sheep after sheep
staggered and fell. Hano’s eyes blazed with indignation. At least six
of these white-clad Mexicanos were up there and three of the sheep
were killed, a noble ram and two ewes, but still the slaughter went on
unceasingly. That band of big horns and a few others like it around
Pinacate were almost the sole meat supply of Hano’s tribe. A few each
year had been plenty to keep them all in meat. _One_ ram would have
been more than enough to feed all this band of white men all they could
carry away, yet nothing less than the slaughter of them all--brutal,
thoughtless, insensate killing for the mere pleasure of shooting seemed
their purpose. Higher and higher the Mexican hunters climbed, following
the doomed sheep up to the ridges. Once over them and----
With a great bitter cry of rage at the sickening insatiate greed of
it, Hano rose to his feet, snatched Niltci’s rifle from his hands and
emptied it in rapid shots. He sent bullets whistling among the hunters
up in the crags, then shot down horses among that group closely packed
in the Pass below them. Dashing down the empty weapon with a curse
of rage, he bounded down through the mesquite and was lost to sight.
Niltci, himself overwhelmed with indignant sympathy over this useless
slaughter of wild life, had not interfered with Hano and he now picked
up the rifle and reloaded it.
“Good hunch, Injun! Shootin’ them hosses is our best bet arter all!”
muttered Big John to himself raising the meat gun to his shoulder. He
aimed full at the serapé-clad rider who sat his horse, yelling up at
the hunters above and signaling urgently to them to return.
“Greaser, I could kill you now, an’ end all this to onct,” he muttered,
“but ontil you shoots at me fust, I cayn’t do it.” He lowered the
sights a trifle and pulled trigger. Instantly the horse which the
Mexican rode collapsed and fell kicking on the sands. Vasquez jumped
free.
“_Gringoes! Enemigos! Tira! Tira!_” he yelled, shaking his fists and
pointing wildly.
Big John went on shooting, picking off horse after horse. Niltci’s
rifle was thundering in his ears, for the indignant Navaho had turned
_his_ fire on the sheep slaughterers now scrambling madly down the
hill. A wild commotion had broken out in the confused knot of horses
and men that were left of the cavalcade. Presently a band of five of
them mounted and rode swiftly toward their position. Then down below a
single war whoop rang out and Big John saw a lone Indian rider dash out
into the Pass. It was Hano, making his sacrifice of leading as many as
possible of the enemy after him away into the desert. A fusillade of
shots greeted him; then the rapid clatter of hoofs as the whole band
swept by, Hano far in the lead on Sid’s pony. Big John dropped the
foremost horse as they passed below him; the rest swept by quirting
their mounts furiously as Hano disappeared over a swale in the sand
dunes.
“Now we got to settle with Mister Vasquez!” exclaimed Big John grimly.
“Thar’s still half a dozen of them with him, against the two of us up
yonder.”
But Niltci did not hear for he had crept up to a better position. He
had seen nothing of Hano’s race as he was too hotly engaged with the
Mexicans on the hillside.
Big John peered out of his rocky lair, looking for “that ornery
Vasquez.” A glimpse of him showed high among the rocks; then his rifle
barked and the bullet spanged the rocks near by. The other Mexicans
were now well concealed in the crags and the crack of their rifles
and the whine and smash of Mausers about Big John’s position told him
that the battle was on in dead earnest. For a time the fight remained
stationary, both sides so well concealed that no quickness of sight
could register a direct hit. Then a shot rang out, much nearer to the
left.
“Bad business, Niltci,” called out Big John, “they’re working down this
way an’ hev got us cornered on this little knoll. We gotto do a sneak
around this point and git above them somehow.”
Niltci had already foreseen the danger, for he was now creeping
snakelike through the rocks around the right flank of the knoll.
Big John grunted whimsically as he followed after: “Gosh dern it, I
ain’t even goin’ to _act_ civilized, pronto, if these hyar doin’s keeps
up! I don’t like that party in the barber-pole poncho, none, an’ I’ll
get careless and drill daylight through him ef I don’t watch myself!”
he soliloquized.
Then he came out on the right flank of the knoll, where all that vast
interior angle of the mountain range burst at once into full view. For
a moment he peered out and just stared! A huge black apron of lava
fell out of the high lap of the mountains and spread far and wide down
the slope until lost in the sands. But, dominating the gap where this
lava flowed out, he saw two immense red walls, cast up like opening
trap doors of granite. From his position the whole formation could be
grasped in its entirety and its resemblance to a mesa struck Big John
at once.
“She looks jest like Thunder Mountain up near Zuñi to me,” he muttered
wonderingly, “only she’s red. _Red Mesa_, by gum!” he exploded, as the
conviction smote upon him. “An’ that pesky Sid’s been and gone an’
found it! Thar’s whar he is, now, with them Apaches, I’ll bet my hoss!
Wouldn’t that knock ye dead?”
Silent, majestic, imposing, Red Mesa shimmered in the morning sun, high
above all. That it held the secret of Sid’s disappearance and explained
the mystery of these Apaches was a conclusion that Big John jumped to
instinctively.
And then a shrill squall of triumph rang out high on the mountain side
above him! Big John crawled to a better outlook and gazed upward.
Exposed on a ragged pinnacle, Vasquez stood waving a rifle triumphantly
over his head and screaming in Spanish unintelligibly. That he had seen
Red Mesa, too, and was calling to himself all his guerrillas there was
no doubt at all!
Big John raised his rifle carefully, its tall front sight rising high
above the rear bar. “Four hundred, five hundred; no, more’n six hundred
yards!” he muttered. “It’ll be some stretch for the ole meat gun, but,
greaser, you’ve looked at this parteekler scenery all you’re entitled
to!”
He held the bead steady, resting his elbow on a rock. Gradually his
muscles cramped in a rigid pose while the tiny dot up there in the
crags hovered motionless over the tip of his front sight.
“Sho! greaser,” said Big John, lowering the rifle. “Y’ain’t done
nawthin’ yit what I orter kill ye fer! Yore int’rested, jist now--it’s
our chanct to make a run for it an’ git between you an’ th’ home plate,
I’m thinkin’. Siddy boy, I aims to reach ye this trip!”
He crept rapidly down to where Niltci lay concealed and touched him
on the shoulder. Together they wormed swiftly down the mountain and
reached the sands. Here the high flanks concealed them from the view
of those above. After one sharp glance around by Niltci, both ran at
full speed along the base. Up and up at a gentle slant for some half
a mile the sand drift led them, until they had arrived at the foot of
the lava flow where it dipped down below the sands. Along its vitrified
surface they sped--and then Big John stopped and gripped Niltci’s arm,
breathing heavily. Above them on the lava slope an apparition had
appeared. A man crouched in a sort of cave mouth up there, and he bore
a rifle in his hands. He waved energetically to Big John to get under
cover at once.
“Ef that ain’t Sid you can call me a tin-horn gent!” gasped Big John.
“_Whoopee, Sid!_ Keep down!--_Look out_, watch yourself!” he yelled out
alarmedly.
His outcry was fatal. A rifle whanged out up in the cliffs above and
instantly came the sharp thud of a bullet. Big John coughed, groaned in
the inflectionless cry of the unconscious, and tumbled in a heap on the
rocks. Niltci gave one swift glance upward at the man in the serapé
who had fired, then grabbed Big John and dragged his huge shape under
the shelter of a crag. Sid had disappeared as if struck flat, but the
whip of his army carbine rang out sharply. A volley of shots replied,
coming from all over the hillside. Bullets struck the lava apron and
went whining off into space; more of them plunged down around Niltci’s
position.
Bits of granite flew in a sharp dust about him. The place was utterly
untenable. Niltci looked for a better lair, noted a little hollow in
the crags and then jumped out and exposed himself to draw their fire
for an instant. He heard shot after shot whipping out from where Sid
lay, felt the terrific smash of Mausers all around him, then he picked
up Big John and raced with him for cover. A sharp touch seared his arm.
He felt it grow paralyzed in spite of him and it let the cowman drop
violently against the rough scoriated boulders. A groan came from Big
John, showing that he still lived, then the Navaho flung himself into
the lair and rolled the great limp body in after him.
But this could not last! It was as hot a corner as man ever got into.
Sooner or later flankers from the guerrillas above would find a
position from which it could be fired into, and then nothing could
save them. Niltci raised his voice in a low Navaho’s death chant,
watching the rocks above him from a crevice in his lair, rifle poised
for instant use. He needed help badly. Finally he sent out the word for
it in a ringing call that would be understood by the Apaches, if any
were near. It would be upon their honor to respond.
An occasional desultory shot now came from Sid, up there on the lava
apron. Above on the mountain was silence, sinister, and foreboding.
The Mexicans were creeping carefully, silently downward toward him.
Presently there would be a rush of overwhelming numbers--then death!
Niltci waited, finger on trigger, eyes alert. A slight sound and the
rolling of a stone came from somewhere above, but he could see nothing
without exposing himself to he knew not what danger. It had been Big
John who had rescued _him_ from his own kinsmen, during those fanatical
disturbances caused by the Black Panther of the Navaho, and Niltci
would never desert him now! Coolly, resignedly, he awaited that final
rush that would be the end of them both.
A rapid movement and the flinging of a body down behind some rocks
sounded above him, right close now. Sid’s rifle sang out but its bullet
was too late. Relentlessly they were closing in!
A low groan sounded below Niltci. He glanced back out of the corner of
his eye and saw that Big John’s eyes were open. His face was livid,
drawn and gray, but he was turning feebly on his side and fumbling at
the big revolver strapped to his thigh.
“Watch yoreself--Injun--I’m gyardin’--yore rear,” muttered the cowman
hoarsely.
Niltci felt better. Big John was alive and could shoot, anyhow! He
moved to a new position where he could command more of the rocks above.
White-clad figures dodged instantly out of sight behind rocks as he
appeared. They were all quite near him, not over forty yards off. All
that was needed was some signal to precipitate a concerted rush. Niltci
looked about him for help again. Only the silent lava wall and the
surety that Sid was on watch up there gave him any hope at all. Well,
it would soon come! All he hoped for was the chance of a few shots from
the repeater before one of these buzzing Mauser bullets brought final
oblivion.
And then, far above on the mountain side, sounded the rapid belling of
a hound!
_Ruler!_ Scotty was coming, and he would take them _all_ in the rear!
Niltci fingered his trigger eagerly as the musical notes floated nearer
and nearer: “Come, white boy! Come!” he sang, in urgent Navaho chanting.
A heavy repeating rifle opened up, its familiar cannonlike roars
sounding sweet in the Indian lad’s ears. That .405 could outrange
anything on the mountain, and Scotty was a dead shot!
Yells and cries broke out all around him above. Men rose bewildered
while Niltci emptied his repeater and Sid’s rifle spoke rapidly, shot
after shot from the lava. The guerrillas were breaking, running. Like
snakes they were creeping off to new points, out of reach of that heavy
.405 whose bullets split the granite where they struck!
Niltci felt that the psychological moment for attack had come. This
whole movement was bearing off to the left now, the only place where
the guerrillas could be safe from fire above and below. He leaped
forward, darting from cover to cover and firing at every sight of
a white figure among the rocks. Behind him he heard ringing Apache
war whoops, and, looking back, saw the whole lava slope covered with
buckskin-clad figures that had come from he knew not where. In a
moment more his own mountain flank had swallowed them all up. Niltci
gave a single answering cry and pressed on.
Then he stopped, his heart stricken dead with sudden alarm, for a whirl
of objurgations in Spanish raged below him and he saw a serapé-clad
figure racing along under the crags of the base, headed straight for
where Big John lay concealed! Niltci turned and flung himself down the
mountain, exposing himself recklessly. To get to the wounded Big John
before this demon could finish him--ah, might the Great Mystery lend
him wings! In three leaps he had reached the rocks above the lair. He
jumped out, rifle at shoulder, unmindful of anything but not to be too
late. Niltci got one glimpse of Vasquez, standing with rifle poised,
his eyes glaring with surprise, for instead of Sid--the boy with the
Red Mesa plaque--Big John lay facing him, lying on his side, cool
resolution shining steadfastly in his eyes, the big revolver poised in
a hand that nevertheless shook with weakness.
But before either of them could pull trigger a war bow twanged
resonantly and the swift flash of an arrow swept across Niltci’s face.
He saw Vasquez tottering, faltering, and crumpling slackly; heard the
rifle and the revolver bellow out together--and then a tall Apache
chief stood before him, breathing laboredly, his eyes flashing the wild
fire of war. Niltci held his ground and his rifle half raised. Peace or
war with this chief, the Navaho boy faced him undaunted and Niltci was
going to defend that place to the last! Below him was the little rocky
lair where lay Big John, silent, face downward.
The Apache raised his hand in the peace sign. “Navaho, thou art a
brave man! He that risks his life for a friend!” he dropped his arm
significantly as if to say that no higher test of character existed.
“Come; my young men pursue them, and none shall escape. Let us take
this white man where his wounds can be cared for, my brother.”
Just at that instant Sid came around the rocks about the lava lair. For
a moment he stood looking, first at Big John lying silent as death,
then at Niltci sitting dazedly and weak on the ground. His eyes glanced
only once at the huddled figure of Vasquez.
“Oh! oh!--Big John! Is he dead!” he cried, the sudden catch of a sob in
his voice.
He went over quickly to Big John and felt under his shirt. Then he
looked up, worried, anxious, but hope shone in his eyes. “He’s alive,
Chief! But we must act quickly, for he’s losing blood fast. Help me,
Honanta,” cried Sid urgently.
Together they got at the wound. That Mauser had plunged downward,
smashing through the shoulder at a slant; tipped a lung, as the red
froth on Big John’s lips showed, and had come out in a jagged tear
below the big muscle on his chest. He breathed laboredly and his eyes
were still closed. Sid shook his head and there were tears in his
own eyes. To lose Big John, that faithful, devoted old friend who
had raised him and Scotty from cubdom, had been with them on a dozen
expeditions, a thousand hunts--it was unbelievable!
“I’ve seen worse. My medicine men can cure him!” said Honanta cheerily.
“We shall bring him to our village, and all will be well. My son, your
friends are _our_ friends! They have done well!”
“Thank you, Honanta,” said Sid, simply. “I have yet one more thing to
ask you to do, and then this whole business will come out all right.”
“And that is?” asked the chief, smiling.
“To come with me and meet my father,” said Sid earnestly.
“_Ai!_--I shall go with you soon! But first, where is my son, Hano?
Not yet have I heard his war cry,” replied Honanta anxiously.
Niltci turned from his guard of the place and approached the chief.
“He came to us, Apache. He led us to these mountains. Then came the
Mexicanos. We were to run them a race away into the desert with our
fast horses. But they saw sheep on the mountain. They started killing
them--ugh, but it was a slaughter sickening to see! More than many,
many white men could eat, they shot! Then rose up your son, Hano, out
of ambush and cursed them, as I too would have done. He fired my rifle
at them, killing many horses. When the shells were all gone he left us.
That is all I know.”
“Who _does_ know what became of Hano, then, Niltci?” inquired Sid
eagerly.
The Navaho pointed to the silent figure of Big John.
“Hai!” breathed Honanta’s deep voice. “He _must_ live! I _must_ know
what has happened to my son! If he died, it was as a great chief should
die, for his people. If he lives, this white man shall tell us and my
best trackers shall seek for him. Come!”
They all picked up the inanimate form of Big John and carried him
slowly along the lava apron brink. From afar came the occasional
crack of a rifle. The chase had gone a long distance to the westward.
Once they heard the bellow of Scotty’s .405 from far down beyond the
knoll. The peculiar volume of it was unmistakable, easily told from the
sharper whip of the Mausers. Sid would have liked to join him, but his
duty now was to see Big John under competent care. He had great faith
in those Apache medicine bundles. There were healing herbs in them
that the Indians alone knew; not all their “medicine” was sorcery and
meaningless medicine dances, for in the treatment of wounds they were
wonderful.
Up the steep ascent and through the sulphur-fumed reaches of the cave
tunnel they bore Big John. When he had been laid on a couch in the
medicine lodge and the old men had set to work at his wounds, Sid
called Niltci to him.
“I want to show you this Red Mesa, Niltci,” he said, “for my heart is
heavy within me. We can do no further good here.”
Together they went out into the little valley, Niltci’s cries of
pleasure over its isolation and peace as detail after detail of it was
grasped by his keen Indian mind singing in Sid’s ears. It made him
even more depressed. What would Scotty’s reaction to all this be?
Scotty, the practical, hard-headed engineer, who would no doubt hop
on this mine with a howl of delight and pooh-pooh any suggestion of
abandoning it to the Apaches as their home. The first white man who
staked out a claim here owned it. These Indians _had_ no rights. How
could he reconcile Gold with Nature in Scotty’s mind--dissuade him from
taking his civic rights, for the sake of this people?
Sid wanted to have his mind made up before they set out to join Scotty.
He watched Niltci as they came opposite the mine fissure. The Navaho
boy stopped with another exclamation of pleasure. He was an expert
silversmith himself, and he recognized the metal instantly amid the
dull copper. But in Niltci’s eyes there showed no hint of possessing
it, of taking this whole mine for himself. This metal was for all, the
gift of Mother Earth to the whole tribe, according to his training. He
would be just as welcome to set up his forge here and smelt all the
silver he wanted as the Apaches were to make arrow tips of the copper.
He told Sid this artless viewpoint as the latter questioned him,
seeking light in his perplexity.
Sid shook his head. How different from Scotty’s idea! A claim that gave
exclusive ownership; vast engineering works; ships; an organization
that would take _all_ this metal for _one_ man’s enrichment--that was
the white man’s way!
“Come, we must go find Scotty, Niltci,” said Sid despondently, leading
him away.
Honanta bid them good-by, assuring them that Big John was doing well.
Sid went down the cave tunnel feeling like a traitor. His worst problem
was still ahead of him, he thought.
But the Great Mystery had planned otherwise, in His inscrutable ways.
For, when they reached the lair where Big John had fallen, Vasquez was
gone! Honanta’s arrow had _not_ killed him; he had been simply feigning
death while they were working over Big John!
CHAPTER XI
GOLD VERSUS NATURE
“How goes it, Big John?” asked Sid cheerily, coming into the medicine
lodge the morning after the big fight.
“Bad breath, worse feet--I’m mostly carrion, I reckon,” smiled Big John
weakly from his bandages. “All-same turkey-buzzard.”
Sid laughed gayly. There was no quenching the giant Montanian’s humor
so long as the breath of life existed in him! “Guess you’re better, all
right!” he answered, relieved.
“Whar’s my dear friend, Mister Spigotty?” inquired Big John with
elaborate sarcasm. “Last I seen of _him_, he was fixin’ to turn loose a
machine-gun onto me.”
“We’re still worrying about him, John,” replied Sid seriously. “He got
away. The chief’s arrow took him just as he was about to pull trigger
on you, but I think that loose serapé he wore saved him. An arrow just
loses its punch in it. Anyway, he was only playing ’possum while we
were fixing you up, thinking he was done for. We haven’t seen the last
of him by a long shot. Ever hear the fate of the Enchanted Mesa, John?
That’s what’s worrying me now.”
“Yaas,” said Big John, slowly. “Earthquake shook down the trail up to
her, didn’t it? Then the hull tribe up thar jest nat’rally starved to
death.”
“That’s what the ethnologists proved when they finally got up on
Enchanted Mesa,” agreed Sid. “The Indian legend persisted that a tribe
had once been marooned up on that sheer-walled stronghold. No one
believed it was more than a legend until the mesa was visited by an
aeroplane or something and then they found the ruins of an old pueblo.
Did you ever think, John, that this cave of ours is the _only_ gate to
Red Mesa? If Vasquez blows _that_ up with dynamite we’re all doomed to
starve here--another Enchanted Mesa!”
“Yaas,” sighed Big John, wearily. “But Vasquez shuts hisself out’n his
own mine, that way, though. An’ whar’s yore dynamite?”
“He’ll have some. Sure about that,” said Sid, confidently. “A man
doesn’t go mining without it nowadays. And then, here’s the dickens of
it: he can’t do anything about this mine with us around, see? But, if
he can shut us up here, all he’s got to do then is to hang around--and
let Nature do the rest! We’ll all starve. See? Diabolical idea, eh? But
that’s the cold, cruel, Spanish logic of it, see?”
“Nice hombre!” growled Big John. “Take me out thar, boys, whar I kin
see thet cave mouth, and lay the old meat gun beside me--he won’t do no
sech thing.”
“You lie still!” Sid soothed him. “Honanta knows about it. He’s got
scouts outlying all around the cave mouth.”
“Take me out thar!” insisted Big John. “I ain’t trustin’ no Injuns whar
you boys is concerned! Hyar! Put me under a brush shade at the top of
that lava dam, whar I can see the cave mouth. ’Twill do me good and
give me a job of work!” he urged.
Sid quieted him. “You couldn’t even lift a six-gun, now, old settler!
Lie still. Just as soon as you can be moved we’ll set you out there, if
it will ease your mind.”
Big John sank back, satisfied, as most sick men are, with a promise.
After a time he raised his head again.
“Whar’s Scotty, Sid?”
“I don’t know,” replied Sid, shortly. He shrugged his shoulders and
remained silent, his eyes averted.
Big John regarded him keenly for some time. “You boys been quarrelin’,
without yore old unkel to go settin’ in the game?” he asked,
trenchantly.
“Yes. You see it’s this way,” broke out Sid impulsively. “Scotty’s
all for staking out this mine and filing a government claim on it. I
couldn’t get him to see it my way, so we--well, we had a row over it,”
said Sid. His voice told Big John how it hurt him to have anything come
up between himself and such an old chum as Scotty.
“What’s yore idee, son?” asked Big John curiously.
“Haven’t these Indians any rights?” burst out Sid impetuously. “Whose
mine is it if not theirs? It’s common property with them, though, just
as are the beans they raise and the game they shoot. Along comes Scotty
and thinks because he’s a white man he has a right to stake a claim
and take the whole thing for himself. And our government will give it
to him, too--that’s the pity of it! Did _he_ find it? I guess not! And
it’s their home, too! Are we going to turn them out?”
The fire in Sid’s voice told Big John how hot had been that argument
between the friends. All this was, no doubt, Sid’s side of it.
“If Honanta knew what Scotty was really set on doing not one of us
would leave here alive,” went on Sid, bitterly. “I’ve a good mind to
tell him! Anything, sooner than be a party to rank treachery like that!”
“Scotty’s mother’s pretty hard up, ain’t she, Sid?” asked Big John
softly.
“Ye-es; a little discomfort, maybe, until he can land a good job. But
for that he’s going to turn this whole tribe out, to wander at the
mercy of our government--and you know what that is!”
“Sho! The mine’d pay enough to buy them a reservation big enough to
support them all in the style in which they is accustomed to!” laughed
Big John, weakly, “nawthin’ to it, son.”
“That’s what Scotty says,” replied Sid. “Some day it will pay enough,
maybe--if the promoters don’t skin him out of all his rights in the
mine first. But meanwhile, what about these Indians and those white
miners who will surely come here? Whisky, debauchery of their women,
degradation of their young men--isn’t it always the story when our two
races come together? How can you prevent it?” he demanded.
Big John shook his head. It was all too perplexing to him, in his
present weakened state.
“Think of it, John!” went on Sid, raptly. “A tribe of Indians that has
found peace at last! And now that they think they have nothing that the
white man wants, along comes one of my race--and my own best friend at
that--and he wants the silver and copper on their place! What’s the
answer?--Move on! It’s always that! I told him I’d borrow money from my
father for him, work for him all my life, if he’d only let this go and
keep silent about Red Mesa forever.”
“An’ what’d Scotty say to that?”
“Oh, you know how ’tis!” said Sid wearily. “His head’s sure stuffed
with grandiose dreams! I ought to look at it in a big way, he says.
Scotty thinks he’s a millionaire already. He talks about buying the
tribe a great reservation somewhere, as if Honanta’d agree even to
that. What he wants is just peace--and isolation. Nowhere else would
his people be free from corruption by every white rapscallion who roams
the state. And what mining company would agree to setting aside any sum
to pay them for this place? Isn’t it Scotty’s already, by his mere act
of driving in a few pegs?”
“Sho!” sighed Big John, sinking back again with weakness. The problem
seemed too tough for him. After a silence his voice came dreamily from
the cot. “Gold! Sometimes, Sid, I think--our laws are--all wrong,”
gasped Big John. “No other race but ours--permits one man--to own these
big--nat’ral products--that ought to belong to the--hull country--while
thousands of us--starve. ’Tain’t right--son! ’Tain’t right!”
His voice relapsed in utter weariness. Sid went out of the lodge,
regretting that his own impetuosity had brought this miserable problem
to Big John at such a time.
Honanta met him at the doorway: “Can your big white friend speak?” he
whispered eagerly.
Sid wanted to kick himself for remorse! He had forgotten to ask Big
John the most important question of all--what had become of Hano. Now
it might be too late. The chief’s eyes told him of the long anxious
strain of waiting his Indian friend had been through. Honanta had not
slept during the night. A small group of braves, armed for the trail
and each carrying a bag of pinole at his hip, told him that the search
party was here, ready to go after Hano.
He and Honanta reëntered the medicine lodge and stood for some time
silent and watchful. The still form of the patient moved not. Finally
he turned over, the lines of irksome pain seaming his hawklike face.
Slowly his eyes opened and fixed themselves on Sid. Then they turned on
Honanta and studied him awhile.
“Whar’d ye git _him_, Sid?” asked Big John slowly.
“Hano’s father, Honanta, the man whose arrow saved you, John. Can you
tell where you saw Hano last?”
“Shore! He was fannin’ out through the Notch on yore pony, Sid. One
jump ahead of a posse of greasers. Headed--he seemed to me, for Camino
del Diablo,” said Big John, and again his eyes closed.
Honanta faced Sid, his eyes gleaming with triumph. “It is good! My son
gave himself to lead the enemy away from our home! He has done well,”
he whispered. “Come! We go.”
Out in the fearful sand dunes to the north rode Sid and Honanta with
a few of the Apaches. Mounts there were for them all, for Scotty had
found their own ponies unmolested and a few of the Mexican horses had
been caught. It was a dead and desolate region, with scowling black
mountains all about and the sand burying them high up on their flanks.
Into this waste Hano had ridden, the flying hoofs of the guerrillas
following him as the spurted sand tracks showed. On and on after these
tracks Honanta’s party plodded. There was no water here, no vegetation,
nothing. By midday they had followed the trail north toward the Camino
del Diablo.
Then a cry came from Sid, for far beyond he had spied a lone, low
object lying on the stony waste. Empty cartridges lying along the route
told that the guerrillas had begun to shoot here. Riding nearer, the
object developed into a horse, lying dead and swollen in the sun. Sid
gritted his teeth, for it was his own pony.
“Poor Pinto! They must have shot him at long range. Here are Hano’s
moccasin prints, though, running.”
Honanta looked down at them in silent musing. Then his eyes swept on
ahead. Flying like a deer, Hano had led them on until he had gained the
shelter of some distant rocks, the beginning of the black, bare, and
waterless Tule Mountains.
The party rode on. Soon the horse tracks showed that the guerrillas had
given him up. They could do nothing in the rocks with this Indian, and
being on the wrong side of the border evidently had not been at all to
their liking. In a sudden turn they had swept off down the Camino del
Diablo toward Represa Tanks.
“I take it they’ll all go back to Mexico, Honanta,” said Sid. “They saw
nothing of Red Mesa, and I think we’ve seen the last of _them_.”
Honanta shrugged his shoulders: “My Hano! We must follow on!” he urged.
The Apaches now dismounted and began tracking. But, once in the rocks,
Hano had been too keen even for them. Not a further trace could be
found. He might have gone anywhere, and wider and wider circles came
across not a single footprint.
“Gee! I wish we’d brought Ruler!” exclaimed Sid, vexedly. “Scotty has
him to-day, trying to track Vasquez. While that scoundrel is at large
nothing is safe.”
Honanta seemed relieved. “My son is safe!” he declared. “He’ll reach
Tule Tanks where there is water at this time of the year. Fear not! He
will return some day. We go back to Red Mesa and keep watch.”
It was evening before they rode up that vast sandy valley headed by the
lava apron which flowed out of Red Mesa standing high on the mountain
like some medieval cathedral. Up on its brink Sid noted a brush shade
with a figure lying under it. A hand rose and waved down to them as
they dismounted and tethered the horses where there was feed.
“Good old John--he’s had his own way!” laughed Sid. “On the job again!
Must be getting better, all right. Those are wonderful herbs of yours,
chief!”
He found that Scotty had already returned with Ruler. The intercourse
between the two chums was now strained and lacked their usual cordial
affection, but Sid learned that the dog had been able to track “that
Vasquez,” as Big John called him, over the mountain and out into the
Pass, where he had captured a stray horse and ridden off southwards.
“That means he’ll spend the night at Papago Tanks,” concluded Scotty.
“If we get up a party to go there to-night, we’ll take him.”
“I doubt it,” retorted Sid. “To-night’s the very night he’ll attempt
something against us, don’t you worry! We’ve got to stay here, on
guard, and keep a sharp lookout on the cave mouth.”
“Why?” asked Scotty, mystified at Sid’s words.
“The fellow brought dynamite, sure as we stand here, Scotty. He could
lock us _all_ up in Red Mesa if he could shatter our cave with a stick
of it. That’s the only entrance, and the walls are unscalable.”
Scotty looked surprised. “By George, that’s so!” he exclaimed at
length, nervously.
He fell silent, and Sid could see that his engineer’s mind was already
at work planning some scheme to build a way out in case Vasquez should
succeed. They both went over to where Big John lay with Blaze beside
him. The big cowman’s eyes were bright, and he greeted them cheerily.
“You-all give this old bird plenty of corn pone and Montana chicken
(bacon), an’ he’ll surprise ye, boys!” he chirped. “Ain’t no one goin’
to pull no Enchanted Mesa stuff on us while the old meat gun’s handy!”
He reached down his hand to where the .35 lay on the rock beside him.
“This-yer’s a good job! Pretty soft! Hed a swell time persuadin’ them
Injuns to fix me up hyar, though.”
“We’ll stay here to-night, too, John,” said Sid. “A few extra rifles on
watch won’t hurt.”
Far below the location of the cave mouth showed as a mere black crease
in the lava as seen from their vantage point. Apache scouts were on
guard there, Sid knew, but a stealthy creep, a sudden rush in the dark,
the hurling of a bundle of dynamite sticks they could not prevent. Only
keen eyesight and the alert senses of a dog could give warning.
He suggested to Scotty to take Ruler down there, which the other
was not slow to do, for Scotty acted nervous and constrained as if
his conscience troubled him. He, too, was fighting a battle with
himself--and apparently he dreaded the recommencement of any argument
over the Red Mesa mine, for the meaning of this place was slowly
growing on him. Yet it was hard to give up wealth, a career, success as
a mining engineer--for an ideal!
The Apaches went through their usual sunset worship that evening. It
filled Sid with a mournful regret. If only this life of theirs could
go on unmolested! But it would be impossible, unless some great change
were to come over Scotty. You could not change people! They were what
they were. Scotty meant well; his point of view was the usual thing.
The mine belonged to him and to Sid; the Indians they could provide for
elsewhere, buy a reservation for them in a far better locality than
this--nothing to it!
But Sid knew that the problem went deeper than that. Its isolation
was the real value of this place, its real importance to the Indians.
Nowhere else would they be free from contact with the whites; nowhere
else be free from the inevitable temptations of civilization. Honanta
would look at it that way, Sid knew, if all the ins and outs of this
situation were to be explained to him, and he would never consent to
his band leaving Red Mesa for any exchange whatever.
Later the girl Nahla came to Sid and he was able to comfort her with
news of Hano. That he had not broken his honor but instead had risked
his life for the tribe and made a splendid coup thereby, Sid could see
filled her with a rapture that only he could appreciate. She left him,
singing softly a prayer of thanksgiving to the Great Mystery, and Sid
went on with his watch.
All the desert lay silent and grand and mysterious under the
slow-moving stars as he kept his vigil, ruminating over it all. He
wished that his father, Colonel Colvin, could be brought here. Honanta
would do whatever those wise old gray hairs thought best. Honanta owed
to Colonel Colvin his life, and to an Indian that debt is never paid.
There _must_ be a good way out of all this. Colonel Colvin, with his
wide knowledge of Indian affairs and his broad sympathies, was the man
to point it out.
It was somewhere in the dread hours of the dead of night when the dog
Blaze whined softly and Sid could see that he was peering downward,
his ears cocked to alert attention. Sid followed the line of his gaze
as best he could. Over there near the base of the mountain there
was--something! No man in his senses would attempt to climb over that
mountain in the dark through all its bristly cactus and choyas, Sid
reflected. The only practicable route would be along its base, where
the sand would deaden hoofbeats and a man could approach unseen.
But an Airedale can see in the dark far better than humans, better even
than a hound. Ruler had given no sign below, but Blaze had evidently
become suspicious. Nature had not given him the hound’s nose, but she
had compensated by an eyesight equal to a cat’s.
A faint grunt came from Big John as his hand crept down to the rifle
below the cot. “Watch yoreself, Sid! Blazie boy, he sees somethin’ out
thar an’ don’t ye ferget it!” he warned. “That Vasquez is comin’, shore
as shootin’.”
Sid strained his eyes. The blackness of the valley was impenetrable.
Once a shock of alarm thrilled through him as a low humped object,
half discerned in the black shadows of the mountain base, seemed not
where it was when he had last tried to make it out but nearer. But as
he looked the blurred form appeared stationary, immovable as one of
the boulders. Yet, after a time, when his eyes grew fatigued with the
strain, it was gone!
Instantly he raised his rifle and an impulse to give the alarm
overpowered him. But he stifled it, peering with all his might. Better
let Vasquez come nearer than frighten him off now, otherwise, it would
all have to be repeated later.
A brooding stillness kept up. The far-off howls of coyotes came from
over the mountains where they were no doubt fighting over the carcasses
of those slaughtered sheep. None were around here, with that ghastly
feast spread. Sid waited for he know not what to develop, finger on
trigger, hand on Blaze’s back to quiet the eager dog.
Then a hoarse growl rumbled in Blaze’s furry throat! He rose unsteadily
to his feet and a bitter snarl bared his teeth. Some unfamiliar taint
in the air had now come to his nostrils. Sid looked down alert, finger
on trigger. A movement on the cot told him that Big John, too, had
picked up the .35 and was peering keenly below. But they could see
nothing. Nothing moved. All the slope and the sands below it was as
silent and inscrutable as death.
Then a throaty bellow came from Ruler below. A bow twanged in the
darkness, and there came the noise of a sudden rush of blurred forms in
the night. Big John turned half on his side and his rifle rose.
“Gosh, fer a light!” Sid heard him mutter.
Ruler’s challenging bark was roaring out now. The dog had rushed
down the slope. And, as if to answer Big John, the sudden flare of a
watch-fire sprang up.
It showed the Apaches crouching and shooting their arrows--but it
showed also a figure in a flying serapé climbing rapidly up the cleft
toward the cave mouth. A sputtering fire shot out sparks; then, as the
bellowing roar of Big John’s .35 rent the night, there came a sizzling
arc of fire, followed at once by the tremendous, shattering detonation
of dynamite!
Red Mesa rocked to its foundations. A long-drawn subterranean moan came
from the bowels of the rocks, a growl like a distant thunder--then
silence! Sid had gotten one glimpse of a man being blown to bits in the
white glare of that explosion which seemed to spew cannonlike out of
the bowels of the mountain, then his eyes saw nothing, blinded for an
instant by the intensity of it.
“Yah! Greaser!” gritted Big John’s voice in rising intensity of
feeling. “Ye done it--curse ye!” Then Sid heard him fall back with a
weary, hopeless sigh.
Pitchy darkness! a dreadful, tense and tragic silence! a stunning,
appalling silence, wherein all the world held its breath and Sid on the
ledge felt his senses grow numb before the portentous import of it! Had
Vasquez succeeded?
CHAPTER XII
OUT OF THE DESERT
As Sid’s scattered wits returned to connected thought, after the first
few moments following that stunning detonation, his mind and his hopes
went out first to Scotty. How _could_ he and the Apaches down there
have survived, right in the storm center of that explosion? For a time
he dared not even call out, nor was there the least sound of human
beings alive down there to reassure him. Not even a faint groan came up
to his listening ears.
Still there was at least a ray of hope. That white glare of the
explosion had come out like the flare from the mouth of a cannon. The
tunnel, in fact, _was_ a vast stone cannon. Vasquez, true to Sid’s
diagnosis of the Latin mind, had planned his coup logically, had thrown
the bundle of dynamite sticks fair and true right into the mouth of the
cave where it would do the most damage. But he had not reckoned on the
laws of mechanics, the immutable principles of action and reaction.
For the forces of that explosion had blown right back upon him who had
thrown the charge. It had rent him to bits, and Sid had seen enough to
be sure that the victim had been the rash Vasquez himself.
Was there not a hope, then, that Scotty and the Apaches, standing to
one side of the direct blast, had survived it? A man can stand near
the muzzle of a twelve-inch naval gun and yet not be hurt, beyond the
temporary shock to ears and nerves.
In spite of the appalling stillness which kept up, Sid found courage at
last to call out.
“Scotty! Leslie, old chum!--Are you still alive?” his voice quavered
out into the night.
There was a moment of anxious waiting. Then: “Hi!--Don’t worry,
Sid! We’re all right!” called up Scotty’s voice in a peculiar dead
inflection, for his ears were evidently numb. “The thing went off like
a cannon. Only Vasquez himself, who was in the direct line of it, got
killed. We’re all shaken up some, but nothing serious.”
Sid whooped with joy. Never till then did he realize how deep was
his affection for Scotty--that enduring bond that a mere temporary
difference could affect only superficially.
“The cave mouth’s shattered, but I think we can pick it loose,” came
Scotty’s voice more strongly after a time.
Presently the watch-fire flared up again and there came sounds of men
heaving and working and the crash of stones tumbling down the lava
apron.
Then: “Yeaay--Sid!... Listen! She’s all right! She’s clear! I’m coming
right up!” yelled Scotty’s voice, and there were muffled voices of men
entering the cave.
Honanta and Scotty joined them on the apron ledge shortly after. Sid
felt a deep restful sense of thankfulness now that it was all over. The
menace of starvation for Red Mesa was gone; Vasquez, the only other
person who knew about the mine, could do no more harm. He wanted to
sleep now, and sleep well. After that, a last appeal to Scotty in which
Big John, he was sure, would join him. After mutual congratulations
had been exchanged he got his bed roll and laid it out beside Big
John’s cot, thoroughly tired and relaxed. The cowman was sleeping
peacefully. After that glad hail of Scotty’s, Nurse Nature had claimed
him immediately!
It was not until morning that the real disaster to Red Mesa became
known. A cry from one of the squaws awoke Sid. He rolled sleepily out
of his blankets, to find her pointing excitedly at the lava basin of
the tank. It was half empty!
Down at least six feet below the rim was now the level of the water, as
Sid stared at it unbelievingly. It was all too cruel to sense at first;
too great an irony of fate for the human mind to comprehend. But, after
the first interval of stupefaction, Sid understood what had happened.
That explosion had opened a fissure in the lava bottom of the tank--and
Red Mesa was slowly bleeding to death! A rush to the rim of the basin
confirmed it. There, down along one edge of the apron, a thin trickle
of water was flowing silent, unceasingly sapping away the life blood of
his ideal Indian community, giving their precious indispensable water
to those thirsty sands of the desert drinking it up far below!
What a thing is puny man! Armed with the unlimited strength of
dynamite, _one man_ had done all this; destroyed at a blow all living
things that flourished here, upset the huge yet delicate balance of
Nature, driven into a wandering exile a once happy people.
A great sob rose in Sid’s throat as what all this meant came over him
in an overwhelming wave of emotion. What Scotty _might_ have done in
leading here the slow advance of civilization, that villain Vasquez had
brought about in one mad moment of callous cupidity. Sid ground his
teeth in helpless rage. Then he turned and raced for Scotty’s bunk up
near the mine. He, the engineer--he could stop this catastrophe if any
one could!
Already, as he passed, he could see the bottom of the tank, dim and
muddy below the fast vanishing level of the water. Around its edges
Apache women were wailing and wringing their hands, some drawing water
while any yet remained. Honanta and his braves had gathered and stood
looking down at the tank in stolid perplexity, helpless, knowing not
how or why this cruel thing was happening, nor what to do.
“Wake, Scotty! Quick! Our water’s all going from the tank! Help us, old
man--hurry!” shouted Sid wildly, shaking him.
Scotty sat up, and immediately his eyes fell on water level, now far
down in the lava basin, the pool itself shrunk to half its normal size.
“That explosion must have cracked a fissure open somewhere, last
night,” said Sid. “Only look, Les!” he groaned.
Scotty pulled on his boots rapidly. “No use trying to stop it from
below, Sid,” he declared with the sure knowledge of the engineer. “The
water head would burst any dam we could build down there. We’ve got to
find the crack in the bottom up here and stop it. All hands into the
tank!” he cried energetically.
Sid waved his arm to Honanta and his bucks to jump in and join in
the search for the leak, but they stood back, arms folded, eying him
gloomily. Childlike, in many ways, is the Indian mind! Before anything
whose cause they cannot reason out they stand helpless. Only Niltci
followed Sid and Scotty into the water, and that from blind obedience.
“Hunt for a hole in the tank bottom, Niltci!--Hunt for all your worth!”
ordered Sid, handing him a stick as they waded about the pool. Its
water was now less than three feet deep, the bottom smooth and slippery
with mud. Somewhere down there a crevice, maybe only an inch wide, was
drawing down the water--but where! The bottom was smooth and hard as
flint; nowhere did the searching sticks find any crack that had no
bottom.
Scotty’s face grew more and more concerned as they reached the end of
the tank away from the lava outflow. Here it grew deeper and the bottom
was all ragged pot holes of scoriated lava. Here gases had forced their
way out from below while yet the molten stuff was soft. His stick felt
down into deep jagged holes and could tell him nothing as to whether a
fissure existed at the bottom of them or not.
In spite of his forced air of cheerfulness the outlook grew more and
more hopeless. Somewhere down here was the leak, but where? Finally he
came to a deep jagged pot-hole which swallowed his stick and more--down
to the limit of his armpits. He sent Niltci for a pole, his face drawn
with anxiety, for failure as an engineer, utter and complete, was
now staring him in the face. When it arrived it went down into that
pot-hole its full depth, to touch only ragged scoriations of lava, at
the bottoms of any one of which might be the fissure.
“Sid, we’re done!” cried Scotty, hopelessly, tears starting from his
eyes. “Only concrete and lots of it can fix this! Oh, Sid, I’d give
anything in the world to be able to help them!” wept Scotty, prodding
futilely with his pole in a mechanical effort to relieve the stress
in his mind. “They must all go! All this must die!”--waving his arm
around at the green and flowering things that made the valley gracious.
“You were right, Sid! This is the object lesson I needed--gorry, but I
needed it in all my visionary pride! This is what I would have done to
Honanta’s people, only in another way. The pity of it! I see it now--I
don’t _want_ their mine--at such a price!”
“Isn’t there anything we can _do_?” barked Sid rebelliously. “Throw in
rocks--dirt--skins--_anything_ to stop it!”
Scotty shook his head mournfully.
“We’d be too late--look at the water now!”
At once the hopelessness of it all overtook even Sid’s buoyant nature.
The water was now only two feet deep and a wide area of glistening mud
swept down from the brink. The edges of it had already dried in the
desert air.
Sid waded out and faced Honanta, shaking his head solemnly.
“My son, why did the white man do this cruel thing?” asked the chief,
his deep voice filled with gentle rebuke. “My people must wander forth,
now--I know not where.”
“Because he wanted your mine, Honanta!” gritted Sid passionately, over
the injustice of it all. “To get it for himself he hoped to lock us
all up here, to die of starvation, like the people of the Enchanted
Mesa. And now look how it has turned out! I stand here--ashamed,
Honanta--ashamed of my race!”
“_Take_ your mine! It is always so when the white man finds gold! All
this must die! The red man must go!”
“No!” barked Scotty wildly through his tears. “No, chief! You won’t
have to go! Concrete can fix it! As soon as the water is gone we shall
get at the crack and seal it. We’ll mend the basin and then leave you
in peace forever. I promise it, here and now! Never, never shall any
mention of your mine cross my lips!”
“My son, many, many rains it took to fill that tank! My people were
careful to use each year no more than the Great Mystery saw fit to send
us. We have done no wrong, yet is the face of the Great Mystery hid
behind a cloud. We must go forth!” sighed Honanta.
He turned to his old men and gave an order. Immediately the whole
village became the scene of busy preparations for the march. Sid
watched them with tears in his eyes, while Scotty protested vainly
to Honanta. Where could they go? To Tinajas Atlas, perhaps, there to
hide in some rocky fastness of the desert, forced to fetch water from
long distances and sooner or later to be discovered at the tank by our
border rangers, rounded up and sent back to the reservation.
It must not be! He and Scotty had brought all this upon them; it was
their responsibility to see to it that another and a better home should
be found for them. Perhaps Scotty was right, in the long run. If they
could retain control of this mine and operate it successfully, there
would be money enough to repay Honanta forever.
By noon the village reported ready for the march. Men, women, and
children, they would go forth on foot into the pitiless desert, and
somehow, through untold sufferings, incredible endurance, would make
that march to a new home--but it could never, never, approach the
freedom and peace of this spot, the Arms of the Great Mystery!
Towards its high red walls Honanta now raised his hands in silent
prayer and farewell. Soon it would become a sun-baked, scorched, arid
ruin, the home of saguarro and choya, a place that no one but white men
would want. With its empty, bare and mud-caked basin, that once held
smiling and life-giving water--Red Mesa was dead.
Sid looked on, so overcome with sympathy that he had not given their
own problems a thought. Yet, with the last of the water, they too would
face the pitiless scourge of thirst. Big John would have to be moved to
Papago Tanks, somehow. But all that could wait.
“Good-by, white boy!” said Honanta, coming up to grip his hand
strongly. “Tell your father that, some day, I will visit him--when my
people are provided for.”
He turned to give the order to march.
Who sneers at coincidences? They happen to us daily, in those abrupt
meetings of chance whose obscure workings of cause and effect we know
nothing of, nor can trace. One happened now; for, as Honanta had raised
his head to give the order, at that instant there came a hail from Big
John on his cot on the apron brink.
“Hi, Sid!--Say!--Hyar comes yore _daddy_!--An’ that Apache feller!” he
sang out. For a moment Sid stood looking at him in sheer amazement. Had
Big John gone delirious? How and why had Colonel Colvin come here? But
if it was really, truly so----
“Wait, Honanta! Wait!--You _shall_ see my father, and your own son,
sooner than any of us expected!--Wait!” cried Sid, running after the
chief to seize his arm.
With Sid, unable to comprehend how or why his father could actually be
here, they went together along the empty tank to the apron brim.
But it was true! Down there on the sands of the valley two riders were
coming, and Honanta gave a great cry as his keen eyes recognized the
smaller of the two.
“Hano!--My son! My _son_!” he yelled, his stoic Indian reserve broken
down by the intensity of the moment.
Sid waved energetically to the other rider whose thick-set figure told
that he was an older man, undoubtedly Colonel Colvin himself.
Presently a hail came from them both, and then the younger man led
on, showing the older one how to reach the cave mouth. After a tense,
excited interval of waiting Colonel Colvin issued out of the medicine
lodge and ran toward Sid. Hano stood by the lodge, the girl Nahla
already passionately clinging to him. Honanta stalked toward his son as
all the tribe stood by and watched.
“Gad!--Sid, my boy, we’ve had _some_ ride!” burst out Colonel Colvin
bluffly, as Sid went to his arms and Scotty gripped at his extended
hand. “This Apache boy, Hano, found me at the ranch and told me you-all
were in trouble. Seems that he escaped from some Mexicans out of the
desert and reached the railroad at Tacna. There he sold all he had and
bought a ticket to our station, Colvin’s, on the main line. ‘Knew my
name, long time’ is all I could get out of him. But it was plain enough
that you were in trouble down here and he wanted me to come quickly, so
we took the train to the Ajo Mines, bought horses and rode here.--Hey!
What the nation’s the matter with our John?” he broke off suddenly as
his eyes fell on the occupant of the cot.
“Oh, I jest nat’rally stopped a leetle lead in a fight we had with
the greasers hyarabouts, Colonel,” grinned Big John. “Jest hed to,
sir!--Them durned boys won’t be satisfied till they kills this ole
puncher, nohow, I’m thinkin’!” he grimaced whimsically. “Lots doin’
’round hyar, Colonel! Let them boys tell you all about it.”
He sank back happily while Sid told him the whole story of the Red
Mesa plaque, of the trip to Pinacate and then of Vasquez’s diabolical
attempt and the consequent loss of all their water.
Colonel Colvin listened sympathetically. Before Sid had finished he
felt a touch on his elbow and turned to find Honanta facing him.
“Does my white father remember the massacre of Apache Cave--and this?”
the chief asked, his voice vibrating with emotion as his hand touched
the gold double eagle dangling on his chest.
“Yes--a bitter memory, chief!” replied Colonel Colvin. “The Army does
not talk of it much. Curious!” he exclaimed, looking at the coin and
evidently searching back in his memory. “Why, I was in that fight
myself!--I remember that coin--or a piece just like it--I gave one to a
poor squaw whom we found badly wounded with a baby in her arms. She was
the only one left alive in all those heaps of slain Apaches. Gad, but
that massacre was a devilish piece of business for the Army to have to
do!”
“I _am_ that baby, my white father!” said Honanta, drawing himself
up dramatically. “The sole living survivor of Apache Cave--and
unconquered! My heart told me that this young man, whose name was also
Colvin”--indicating Sid--“was your son. Therefore I spared him, when
my old men advised that he be slain, since he had discovered this our
refuge.”
He waved a fringed arm around at the mighty walls of Red Mesa. “This
was our home!” he declaimed. “No more! The white man came, and he took
our water. All of it! Our home is dead. We must go!”
“Where _will_ you go, chief?” asked the Colonel, eying Honanta keenly.
“I know not,” said Honanta, wearily. “Somewhere out into the desert,
where my people can find peace again.”
“Listen, chief!” said Colonel Colvin earnestly. “Where I live is called
the Grand Cañon of the Gila. Your people knew it well, once. High above
us towers a mighty peak, all orange in the glow of the sun, and across
it a great band of pure white. That peak you have heard of, I know,
chief!” declared Colonel Colvin, and Honanta nodded in confirmation.
“In the valley of our river are timbered ranges, where deer and bear
and turkey run wild and trout fill the streams. Across from us are
steep precipices along which leads the old Apache Trail--the home of
your fathers, chief. I own much land there, plenty for all of us. This
mine the boys tell me of in your Red Mesa will buy more. If that golden
double eagle means any obligation to you, chief, will you come to my
place with your whole band--there to live as did your fathers?”
Honanta hesitated. His eyes beamed with pleasure, yet a troubled,
doubtful expression in them told Sid that he was wondering how long our
government would let them stay there. Better than the reservation the
freedom of the desert!
“That orange mountain was once a sign of the Great Mystery to your
people, chief,” went on the Colonel, his voice still more persuasive
and compelling. “It stands there yet, a sign that His ways are
unchanging, His mercy everlasting. Come! There is room there for all
of us!--and I will see to it myself that our government grants you
freedom--as it has already done for the Mohave Apaches.”
Honanta’s eyes widened at that last! It was news to him that the policy
of our government had in any way liberalized! Then he stretched out his
hand, his eyes glowing.
“My white father is kind! He is noble-hearted and just!” he exclaimed.
“Would that he and my own father, Chief Chuntz, had known each other
otherwise than over a rifle barrel! I owe you my life, Colonel Colvin;
you have brought me back my son. I thank the Great Mystery that He
whispered in my heart to spare yours! In the name of my people, I
accept your offer, Colonel, gratefully!”
“Good!” exclaimed the bluff old colonel, heartily, as their hands
clasped.
One by one, family by family, the Apaches bade farewell to their homes
and then descended the cave tunnel. A procession followed made up of
Sid and Scotty, Colonel Colvin and Niltci, carrying Big John on an
improvised stretcher. Two horses with the Colonel and Sid riding them,
bore a pole litter for Big John thereafter; the rest were laden with
every jar of water the Apaches possessed. And so the cavalcade set
forth north into the desert.
Sid turned to look back for the last time at Red Mesa. High and lifted
up, its walls rose in huge flanks out of the mountain side, glaring
in the burning sun. Soon there would be no life there, no luxuriant
roothold for green living plants, no happy home for a simple people.
When Scotty got his company organized--and he _did_, in due time, but
that is beyond the province of this story--there would be a scene of
sweating activity there, ore cars coming and going, men and burros
toiling, the great tank repaired and giving water to them all.
But Sid did not want to think of that. Rather he would like always
to remember it as the one place he knew where once Indians had
lived as their forefathers had, long before the white man came--in
simple, reverent faith in the Great Mystery, in the simple needs
of a free people, in the simple, sure, old foundations of Indian
morality--Courage, Honor, Truth, Chastity.
Three days later they reached Ajo Mines. The company lent the Colonel
a train of empty ore cars and the railroad took them to the main line.
Thence the Colonel led Honanta and his people to a land of mighty
mountain ranges, of green alfalfa fields strung along a rushing river
dominated by beetling crags, of herds of fat cattle grazing in a land
of plenty. And here, under the protection of the name Colvin, in the
timbered hills of their forefathers, Honanta and the Yellow Bear clan
of the Apache at last found peace.
THE END
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
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