Kitabı oku: «Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine», sayfa 17
"Bueno," said Mahletonkwa shortly, "and we will go by another. I know many trails through the sierra; there is one that I like well, and I will take you by it."
"Right you are," said Stephens, "that suits me. Lead on." His object now was to avoid any chance of a collision between the Navajos and Mexicans till they should meet at San Remo.
Manuelita walked beside him as they followed the winding and difficult trail taken, by the Navajos through the Lava Beds, but as soon as they emerged from them and found themselves on the smooth ground beyond, he spread a blanket over the saddle to make it easy for her, and insisted on her riding Morgana while he ran alongside.
After a while the leading Indians came to a halt, and were seen to be examining the ground intently. When Stephens and the girl came up to them he found that they had cut their own trail made by themselves the previous day. But there were more hoof-marks in it now than those of the eleven ponies, and they were busily studying the newer signs. Stephens looked at them, too; they were undoubtedly the tracks of the pursuing party under Don Nepomuceno; it was hard to say just how many of them there were, as they were confused with those of the Indians, and the Mexican horses being barefooted, like the Indian ponies, it was impossible to distinguish them. But there were more than a dozen at least, and not one of them wore shoes.
"No soldiers in this party," said Mahletonkwa, looking up at Stephens suspiciously. United States army horses are always shod, as he well knew.
"Certainly not," answered the American unhesitatingly. "These are not the tracks of my party. I never was over this piece of ground before. My scouts cut your trail farther on."
"You had the Santiago scouts with you?" said the Navajo; "I was sure of that when you came to the Lava Beds so quick. Which of them did you have? – the cacique?" His dark eyes snapped as he mentioned him. "Miguel, perhaps, that tall, slim one with the scar on his cheek?" He knew a good deal about the Santiago folk; after the submission of the Navajos had ended the long wars, there had been some intercourse between the former enemies.
Stephens thought it better not to give any names. "Oh, I got some good trailers," he said easily; "but there are other Pueblos besides Santiago, and there are trailers in all of them. Cochiti has men who are first-class on reading signs."
"I know you had that Santiago cacique," said Mahletonkwa cunningly.
"Then if you think so, you'd better ask him to tell you about it when we get back to the settlement," rejoined the American.
They entered the sierra a little before nightfall, and were soon involved in a difficult and tortuous way amidst pine-crowned crags and precipices. Sometimes their horses' feet clattered upon shady slopes of débris; at times they trod softly upon a padded carpet of fir-needles. They were traversing a little cañon just after sunset, when, nearly two hundred yards away on the opposite side, the forms of a herd of deer were silhouetted against the fading sky.
Instinctively Stephens threw up his rifle to his shoulder; he got a bead as well as he could, though it was too dark to pick the exact spot on the animal's side as he pressed the trigger, and at the sharp report the band of dark forms disappeared as if by magic, but the loud "thud" of the bullet proclaimed that one of them had been struck. Instantly he and three of the Navajo young men dashed on foot across the little gorge and scaled the opposite steep, Faro leading the way. The bulldog nosed around for a moment where the deer had been, and as the climbers emerged on top they heard him give one joyful yelp as he darted forward on the scent; two minutes later they heard his triumphant bark, and when they got up to the spot they found him over the dead carcass of a yearling buck, shot through the lungs. It had run some five hundred yards before it dropped, and the bulldog coming up had seized it by the throat and finished the business.
The Indians were loud in praise of the dog, as their knives rapidly and skilfully dressed and cut up the game, while Stephens looked on and rewarded his pet with the tit-bits. All three of the Navajos spoke Spanish well enough for him to understand them as they praised the dog, but when they turned over the deer, and found the place where the conical bullet had come out on the other side, they changed from Spanish into Navajo, and significant laughter followed as they pointed out to one another the two holes, and then pointed to Stephens's rifle. Suddenly it flashed across him that they had got a joke on about something, and that it was not a thing new to him. Their manner made him think instantly of the day when he drove the nail, and Mahletonkwa pointed to his Winchester and told the funny story – funny, that is to say, for the Navajos – about the murder of the prospector. Though he understood no word of what they said, their gestures were too full of meaning for him to mistake them.
"I say," said he abruptly, but with seeming carelessness, "aint this the place that Mahletonkwa told that story about? About the man who was shot with his own rifle, you know?"
The young Indian who was stooping over the game stopped and withdrew his hand from the deer. "What makes you think that?" he asked.
"Well," said Stephens, "he said it happened up in these mountains, and I heard him say, also, that he was particularly fond of this trail we're on. So I just guessed it might have been pretty nigh where we are now."
"So it was," said the Indian, whom Stephens had learned to know as Kaniache, "it was right up this gulch where it opens out above." They had crossed a divide in their chase after the wounded buck, and were in another little cañon not unlike the one where they had left the rest of the party. The darkness was increasing every minute, but the Indian knew precisely where they were. Stephens marked the place in his memory as well as he could, and resolved that he would return to it as soon as might be, to seek out and bury the bones of the unfortunate victim of Navajo treachery and cunning.
They gathered up the meat of their quarry, and hastening back to where the rest of the party were waiting for them, they pushed on for fully two hours by the light of the moon, in spite of the difficulty of the way. Camp was made at last by a little stream in a park, and a fire was lighted, though Mahletonkwa was so suspicious of being followed that he put a couple of scouts to watch their back trail and signal the approach of any possible pursuers.
Stephens sat down by the fire, and set to work roasting pieces of the venison on spits of willow for Manuelita and himself. She was tired, but not exhausted, and he could not but wonder at the power she exhibited of enduring fatigue, she who ordinarily took no more exercise than that involved in doing her share of the labours of the household, varied by walking over to the store or paying a visit to a neighbour. But she came of a tireless race. It might be said of the Spanish conquistadores, that for them —
"The hardest day was never too hard, nor the longest day too long,"
and this endurance has descended to the women sprung from them as well as to their sons.
Stephens aired for her benefit the only wraps he had to offer her, the blankets that had been under and over the saddle; but he went to a clump of young pines growing near, and with his hunting-knife hewed off a quantity of the small shoots from the ends of the boughs.
"You'll never guess in a month of Sundays, señorita, what we call these on the frontier," said he, as he proceeded to arrange them in neat layers, to make for her an elastic couch. "Give it up? We call them 'Colorado feathers,' and they're no slouches in the way of feathers neither. Besides, they say the smell of turpentine's mighty wholesome. The doctors in Denver recommend camping out to the consumptives who come out for their health, just that they may get the benefit of them. Spruce makes the best, and it's the most aromatic."
"Here, you get out, Faro," he apostrophised his dog, who had as usual promptly taken possession of the blankets as soon as they were spread down, "you get out of that, that's not your place;" and he pushed him off.
"Oh, don't hurt him!" cried the girl; "he likes it; let him stay."
"Well, all right, then, señorita," he said, pleased that his pet should find favour, "if you don't mind having him there, he'll lie at your feet and keep them warm; and now you'd better lie down and rest yourself all you can, for we aint home yet, and you can bet it's a 'rocky road to Dublin' through this sierra that we've got to go to-morrow"; and with these words he turned away to the fire.
"But," cried she, looking at the provision he had made for her, "you have kept no blanket for yourself; you must take one or you will freeze." His generosity distressed her.
"No fear," he returned without looking at her, while he deliberately settled himself down beside the fire and lit his pipe with a coal, "no fear, señorita. I'm calculating to keep guard anyhow, and there's lots of firewood here. That's the beauty of a mountain camp."
"No, thank you, Mahletonkwa," this was spoken to the chief, who at this juncture came and offered him a blanket, being anxious to conciliate the man whom he now depended on for so much, "not for me, thank you; muchas gratias; I'm all right. I'm going to keep this fire warm, and watch the 'Guardias' circle round the North Star." The "Warders," two bright stars of the Little Bear, act as the hour-hand of a clock which has the Pole for its centre, and by them a frontiersman on night-herd knows when his watch begins and ends.
The Indians, suspicious as ever of a possible attack, kept aloof from the fire, and lay down to sleep at a little distance outside the ring of light. Stephens established himself on the windward side of the fire, and set up the skin of the buck he had shot as a windbreak behind his back against the chill night air of the sierra.
Tired as he was with his long day's walk on foot, he lay there, warming first one side and then the other, and replenishing the fire at intervals, while he listened to the well-known sounds that from time to time broke the silence of the hours of watch – the sough of the night wind in the pines, like waves beating upon a far-off shore; the strange, nocturnal love-call of an unseen bird; the long-drawn, melancholy howl of a night-wandering wolf, seeking his meat abroad; and once his ears thrilled at the agonising death-cry of a creature that felt the sudden grip of the remorseless fangs of the beast of prey.
"Beasts of prey," he mused, "yes, that's just what we humans are too, the most of us, and we take our turn to be victims. Killers and killed. Well, if anybody's to blame for it, I suppose it's the nature of man."
Going back in his mind over the events of the day, he recalled the fierce desire to shed blood that had possessed him when he left the cacique and his fellows and set out to handle these Navajos alone. It seemed as if that much-angered man with the tense-strung nerves was some other than he. Now, peace was made, the captive was safe; and as he looked at the girl sleeping there unharmed, dreaming, it might well be, of her safe return home on the morrow, he felt a sort of mechanical wonder at the rage that had then filled his heart. He thought, too, of the shots that had been fired at him by the Navajo, – he had not cared to inquire which one it was, – and in imagination he felt the hot lead splash on his cheek again. He had been mighty near the jumping-off place that time, sure. And yet it had been all about nothing, so to speak. It had been a sort of mistake. He had wanted peace, really, and so had they; yet how near they had come to turning that little oasis into a slaughter-house. Fate was a queer thing. He looked up at the velvet black of the sky overhead and the endless procession of the stars. The moon had gone, but Jupiter still blazed in the western heavens. What did it all mean, and what was one put here for, anyway? He confessed to himself that he did not know; that he had no theory of life; he lived from day to day, doing the work that lay next him, and doing it with his might; but in the watches of the night he brooded now – not for the first time – over the old problem, "Was life worth living, and if so, why?" To that question he was not sure that he had any answer to give. Perhaps the secret might lie in caring for somebody very much, and at present he cared for nobody – very much – so far as he knew. Suppose that Navajo bullet had found its billet in his brain, thus it seemed to him in these morbid imaginings of the weary night watch, he would be sleeping now the last sleep of all, like that other victim in the cañon over yonder; and what was there in that that he should mind it? Perhaps it would have been better so – perhaps, yes, perhaps.
CHAPTER XXII
A WOUNDED MAN
When the triumphant cacique rode off with the daughter he had recaptured on the banks of the Rio Grande, he left Felipe stretched upon the ground, breathless from his last desperate rush and half stupefied with despair. The angry voice of the cacique sounded farther and farther off; the hoof-beats of the horses died away in the distance. Felipe lifted his head from the sand; he was alone under the wide sky by the great river. The monotonous rush of the water seemed to intensify the stillness; the sun blazed down out of the blue sky; everything was at peace except the despairing, rebellious heart of the boy alone in the desert. How could everything go on so quietly when such a wicked thing had just been done? Why did not the cacique's horse stumble and fall and kill him as he deserved? Why was life so full of injustice and cruelty?
Poor Felipe! The first time that it is brought home to us that the scheme of events has not been arranged for our personal satisfaction, nay, that it may involve our extreme personal misery, is a hard trial – too hard sometimes for a philosopher; how much more so for a poor, untaught Indian boy.
"Cruel, savage, barbarous," he groaned, as he thought of the blows that had rained down upon the shrinking form of his sweetheart. "Poor little thing! Poor little Josefa! I can do nothing for you now; I had best go and drown myself – there is nothing left to live for."
He got up and walked deliberately towards the river.
But before he reached the brink he had had time to reflect. "Nothing left to live for?" he thought. "Yes, there is. I could kill Salvador first. I could get my father's gun and do it. I don't care if they do hang me afterwards."
He knelt down on the river-bank, and bending his head over the water he dipped his left hand in, and by a quick throwing movement of the wrist tossed a continuous stream of water into his mouth in the wonderful Indian fashion which gives quite the effect of a dog lapping. As he quenched his burning thirst, and felt the cool, refreshing dash of the water against his face, his spirit rose.
"I'll go straight back," he said to himself, with a dangerous expression on his set face. "I don't need any rest. I'll be there before the sun's much past noon, and he'll be dead before night."
He washed the blood from his right arm and examined the wound. The bullet had struck him between the elbow and shoulder and had passed out again without touching the bone. The second shot had missed him. He tore some strips from his shirt, and bound it up as well as he could with his left hand aided by his teeth.
He drew his belt tighter to keep off hunger, and drank again before facing the long leagues of waterless desert between him and Santiago. He looked at the rolling river and at the farther shore where he had so longed to be. "Rio maldito!" he cried. "Accursed stream, what happiness you have robbed me of! what misery you have wrought us! Why could you not wait only one day longer?" He turned away, set his face towards the pueblo, and began his weary journey.
He soon found the weight of his arm grow more and more painful as his pulse beat faster with movement, and he had to carry it across his body, supporting it with the other. But he pushed on with a steady, untiring gait, showing the marvellous power of his race to bear pain and fatigue and hunger and thirst. On all the Western frontier there is no white man that is not proud to be credited with "Indian endurance."
Curiously enough, he felt no fear. The cacique's threat to kill him did not affect his purpose in the slightest. He had recoiled from instant death when the pistol cracked in his face, but that was only instinctive, defenceless as he was against a man with firearms. He felt no shame at having done so. It did not seem to him cowardly to avoid being killed if he could. But he did not flinch for a moment when he thought of returning to the pueblo. No doubt Salvador would try to carry out his threat. "Well," thought he, "I must be beforehand with him. If I can't hold my father's gun with this sore arm, I must get Tito's pistol; Tito is my friend; he will not be afraid to let me have it."
The sun rose high in the heavens and beat down upon him as he toiled along, parching him with thirst. He was travelling the same trail back to Santiago that he had traversed the night before. The tracks of the horses going and returning were plainly visible. But what a change for him! A few hours before he had ridden that way feeling every inch a man, with his sweetheart in his arms and the happiness of a lifetime within his grasp; and now – As the thought stung him he pulled himself together and forced his weary feet to carry him on faster.
But anger had made him overestimate his own powers, in declaring that he would be back, and the cacique dead, before night. His strength gave out, and he had to lie down time and again to recover force enough to go on at all. Night overtook him, and he was compelled to stop and light a fire under the lee of a cedar bush, and rest himself in the warmth of it till dawn. Then he set forward, once more, slowly and stiffly, but ever pressing onwards, with his face turned towards the village that was his home, the village where his sweetheart must now be lying at the mercy of her pitiless father. What might not he have done to her ere this! That torturing thought goaded him to renewed efforts.
When he reached the edge of the mesa he was crossing, he looked down into the sandy valley that separated him from the next one; and there right below him, coming at brisk pace, was a mounted Indian. He instantly crouched down to watch if the new-comer were friend or foe; but in a minute he sprang from his concealment. It was Tito, – Tito on the mule of the American.
With a joyful cry he ran to meet him. Tito knew him and shouted back in welcome. "Why, Felipe!" he cried, "I was looking for your body, and here you are alive. Jump up and I'll take you right back. But you're wounded," he added, seeing his arm bound up. "Is it bad? Let me help you up," and he jumped off to help his friend to mount to the saddle.
"Salvador gave me a shot," answered Felipe as he got on with Tito's help; "but it's not very bad."
Tito turned the mule's head round towards Santiago, and jumping on behind struck out for home. The tough little mule made light of the double burden, and rejoicing in the prospect of going back to his beloved mare set off briskly.
"Now tell me all about it," said Tito eagerly.
"Tell me first," answered Felipe, "where is Salvador? What has he done with Josefa?"
"Salvador is made prisoner by the Americano," replied Tito, "for killing you. They think you're dead over there, and they've given Josefa to Sooshiuamo, hoping to keep him from taking the cacique to Santa Fé. He asked for her." Felipe's heart gave a sudden bound. He knew of course that there were white men in many of the Indian tribes with half-breed families, but he had never thought of Don Estevan as that sort of man.
"Valgame Dios!" he cried. "What does he want her for?"
"Who knows?" replied Tito guardedly. "Perhaps he wants someone to cook for him and to take care of the house when he is away. It was he that stopped the cacique from beating her."
"Valgame Dios!" said Felipe again. He hardly heard the rest of Tito's story. He was filled with new fears. Was everyone against him? Was the Americano, of all men in the world, to be the one to supplant him? He remained silent a while, but his suspicions were too strong to be entirely concealed.
"How did he ask for her?" he inquired. "Tell me, Tito."
"He said the pueblo had agreed to give him anything he wanted for blasting the rock," answered Tito; "and he said that he wanted her. So Salvador gave her to him. They all told Salvador to do it, for they thought then he wouldn't take him to Santa Fé. They all agreed to it. Sooshiuamo has put her with Reyna. She's there now."
"Tito," said Felipe very earnestly, "will you lend me your pistol?"
"What for?" said Tito.
Felipe hesitated. Two conflicting plans of vengeance were struggling within him. Then he answered, "The cacique said he'd kill me if I came back. If he has a pistol, I ought to have one. It wasn't fair there by the river."
"Nonsense," said Tito; "he's not going to kill you. Didn't Sooshiuamo make him a prisoner because he thought he had? Why, he was going to take him to Santa Fé to be hanged for it. The cacique was frightened, I can tell you. He won't touch you now, Felipe. Sooshiuamo won't let him."
"Oh, I'm sick of hearing of Sooshiuamo," broke in Felipe impatiently. "Why won't you lend it to me, Tito? You used to."
"That was to go after wild cows," said Tito. "Now I don't know what you want."
"I want to defend myself," said Felipe in a hurt tone.
"But there's no need to," said Tito. "Never mind what Salvador said. He was angry then. He is frightened now. Don't you mind him. It'll be all right. I'm taking you straight back to Sooshiuamo, just as he told me. He'll manage it."
It was easy to see who was Tito's hero now.
They came to the edge of the last mesa and looked down upon the Santiago Valley. Tito jumped off to ease the mule, who cleverly picked his way down the steep, rocky escarpment. At the bottom he sprang on again, and they cantered in the last league over the lowlands.
Felipe resigned himself to fate. "If he wrongs her, I'll have his heart's blood," he thought, but the imaginary "he" was not the cacique.
They reached the corrals, and they heard the cry raised of "Tito's coming! Tito's here!" They pushed on through the crowd to the American's house, and Tito, proud of his success, sprang off before the door.
"See, Sooshiuamo, I have brought him," he shouted out joyfully, thinking he was there, as he aided his friend to dismount. "Here's Felipe. He's not dead, but he has a bullet wound."
He pulled the latch-string, but the door refused to open. It was locked.
"I reckon you must shout a bit louder if you want Mr. Sooshiuamo, as you fellers call him," remarked a man who lounged against the wall near Reyna's door, which was only a few yards from Stephens's. "He aint to home just now."
"Why, where is he?" cried the boys in concert.
"Gone off with the cacique," answered Backus, for it was he; "mebbe he thought change of air would be wholesome after all that rumpus they're bin having this morning"; he laughed an evil laugh.
"Oh," cried Tito, "I suppose he's done as he said he would, taken him to Santa Fé for killing Felipe. But why couldn't he wait a little? Here I've brought him back Felipe no more dead than I am."
"No, nor he aint taken him to Santa Fé, neither," rejoined the Texan, with a malicious pleasure in mystifying the boys. He had gone straight to the cacique's house in his dripping garments after his fall into the ditch, and had waited there, meditating revenge, while they were being dried for him, during which interval he had obtained a full account of all that had taken place, including the fact that Josefa had been transferred to the prospector and was now under his protection at Reyna's. He had just walked over to Reyna's, in the hope of interviewing the girl, when the mule with the two boys on his back came in sight.
"All that gas of his about Santa Fé was nothing but a blind," he went on; "what he wanted was to get Miss Josefa for himself. And he's done it, too." He noted the flash in Felipe's eyes as he said this. "Yes, he's got her bottled up tight, inside here." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the house against which he was leaning.
"But that's only to save her from her father," exclaimed Tito hotly. "He was thrashing her like fury, and Sooshiuamo stopped him and took her away from him." Tito did not feel quite sure himself what Stephens's ultimate object might have been, – Americans were such very unaccountable people anyhow, – but he was not going to have this other American saying things about the man who was his particular hero at the moment, without sticking up for him.
"Jes' so," rejoined the Texan, "he's got her away from her daddy, and he's got her for himself. That's the size of it exactly."
Felipe said nothing, but the rage and despair which had taken possession of his heart made him perfectly convinced that the base innuendo of the Texan was only the simple truth. Tito made another effort to withstand the sinister meaning of the words.
"But he hasn't taken her to live with him," he said. "She's not in his house; it's locked up."
"Yes," said Backus, "for a very good reason. He's gone off hunting Navajos, and he's too jealous of her to leave her there by herself. So he's stowed her away, nice and handy, with his most particular friend next door. See? Why, it's as clear as mud."
"What's he gone hunting Navajos for, though?" asked the puzzled young Indian.
"What, don't you know?" said the Texan. "Oh, I suppose the news came after you'd started. Well, there's a pretty kettle of fish. The Navajos have bagged Miss Sanchez, and run her off Lord knows where, and Mr. Sooshiuamo, instead of taking his newly made father-in-law off to jail, is using him as a smell-dog to run their trail. He and Miss Josefa's daddy are as thick as thieves now. Aint it so, what I've said?" and he appealed to the other Indians standing round for confirmation.
The incredulous Tito appealed to them, too; but the Texan had stated the fact correctly enough; and as for the interpretation he put on them, well, that was a matter where everyone must judge for himself. Opinions varied as to that, but the general verdict was in Backus's favour.
Felipe threw up his unwounded arm in adjuration. "If he takes her from me," he cried, "my curse upon him from the bottom of my heart."
"You seem to take it hard, young man," said Backus eyeing him keenly. "Say, though, you're looking rather dilapidated. What's wrong with you anyway?"
"He's got a bullet in his arm," answered Tito for him.
"Then why the mischief couldn't you say so before, you plumb idiot?" exclaimed the Texan, who instantly divined that here was a chance to make friends with the youth who would now and henceforward be Stephens's bitterest enemy. "Come in here, young 'un, and let me look at it," he said, addressing Felipe; "it's a pity if I don't know a thing or two about gunshot wounds." He knocked at Reyna's door, and when she appeared he said apologetically, "Won't you let me bring in a wounded man who wants seeing to?"
Reyna did not want either him or Felipe, seeing that she had already one invalid in the house, in the shape of Josefa, whom she was nursing in an inner room, and she particularly objected to any complications with Felipe in Stephens's absence. But to be hospitable is a cardinal virtue of the race, and she admitted them in spite of the difficulties she felt. After all, Josefa was safely stowed away out of sight and hearing.
The Texan placed the boy on the ground close to the light, and with the rude skill of the frontier undid the makeshift bandage. The wound was naturally somewhat inflamed; he cleansed it with water and clean rags supplied by Reyna, and did it up again for the patient. "There aint no bullet in that," he said, "or I'm a Dutchman. But you're liable to have an ugly arm, if you don't look after it properly. Now you listen to me. You go right home to your mammy, and have a bite to eat, and lie down and keep quiet. Keep plumb still, d'you mark me, and don't go talking. Rest's what you're wanting this minute. But I can't dress your wound properly here, for I haven't the right stuff with me. I've got some rare good stuff at the store, though, that works like a charm. Now, you come down to me there, this evening when you're rested, and I'll fix it for you good. You do jes' as I tell you, and I'll make a well man of you yet. Sabe?" He helped the boy to his feet and led him to the door.
"But I want to see Josefa," said the boy, addressing Reyna; "I've got something to say to her. Where is she?"
"You'd better go right along and lie down," said Backus, disregarding the interruption; "you aint fit to talk to her now, nor she aint fit to talk to you."
"Let me see her," cried the boy passionately. "I must."
"Hush!" said the old squaw severely, "she's asleep. You'll disturb her. Do what the kind gentleman says, and go home."
Backus had said not a word to a soul as to his fracas with Stephens, nor had it been observed by any of the Pueblo people, so that Reyna had no idea of his hostility to Stephens, to whom she was devoted. Had she known of it she would not have called him "kind gentleman," nor even let him inside her door. Now, however, she backed him in starting Felipe for home under Tito's charge, the Texan reiterating his injunctions to keep quiet when he got there. Then he turned quickly to the mistress of the house. "And how's the other invalid getting on? How's the new Mrs. Stephens?"
"She does very well, now," said the squaw cautiously.
"Don't you think I'd better prescribe for her?" asked the Texan; "I'm a boss doctor, me, for wounds and bruises"; in saying which he did but speak the truth. "Come on, let's have a look at her."
