Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

  CHAPTER XVII

  MADAM WHAILAHAY

  No sooner had they reached the outskirts of the village than they saw aman on foot, whose dress proclaimed him to be a white man, approachingfrom the San Remo direction, not by the road, but by a path that ledthrough the plough-lands. They turned aside to meet him, and as he drewnearer it proved to be no other that Mr. Backus himself.

  "You'd better go ahead," said Stephens to his three Indian companions ashe reined up his mare in order to speak to him. "I'll catch you up in afew minutes, but I just want to hear if he knows anything"; and theyrode forward accordingly.

  "This is a devil of a business," he began abruptly, addressing thestorekeeper, "and I should like to hear what you've got to say aboutit." His lips closed tightly, and there was a dangerous light shining inhis eyes.

  "Ah, about the carrying off of the Sanchez girl," said Backus, with anervous affectation of taking it all rather lightly; "well, yes, it is adevil of a business, as you say; it's the impidentest thing as ever Iheard of. Who ever saw the like of it?"

  "It's a serious matter, I'd have you to know," returned the prospectorwith rapidly rising anger; "it's a dreadful thing for a woman to becarried off by these infernal scoundrels, and for you of all men tospeak lightly of it is nothing less than an outrage. You mark my words."He was exceedingly indignant with this man for his previous conduct, andthat he should assume a flippant tone now was unbearable.

  "Wal', I'm sorry, real sorry about it, of course," said Backus; "andit's spoilt our little game we had on for getting that information outof them Navajos, for the present anyway."

  "I'll trouble you not to talk about 'our' little game," retorted theother hotly. "I cautioned you against mixing yourself up with thosescoundrelly Navajos, and don't you go to imply that I'm involved withyou in any way; I could never look Don Nepomuceno in the face again if Ishared your responsibility for encouraging the villains."

  "Seems to me," sneered Backus, "that for a man as puts on so much style,and takes up such tonified notions as you, talking about 'never goingoutside your own colour' and the like, you make pretty considerable of afuss about a Mexican ranchero and the trouble he's got himself into."

  "I call him a whiter man than you, for one thing," exclaimed Stephens;"and for another, mark me, I hold you personally responsible for thisoutrage. It's a more serious matter for you than you seem to be awareof. You've made yourself liable by the way you behaved yesterday withthose redskins, giving them that whiskey and letting them shoot allabout your place."

  "Why, you was shooting with 'em yourself for one thing," retorted theTexan with intentional insolence in his tone; "and, for another, youmark me, I didn't _give_ 'em no whiskey." He was deliberately mockingStephens; but the latter was in no mood to put up with it, and flinginghis right leg over the mare's neck he jumped to the ground facing thequarter-blood Cherokee. He threw the mare's rein to Faro to hold; it wasa trick he had taught him, and the dog stood there obediently with it inhis jaws.

  "I say you _sold_ them the whiskey, then, if you didn't _give_ it," heexclaimed, full of scorn for the mean evasion of the storekeeper. "Theywere excited with liquor when I came down there yesterday. I smelt it onthem right there at your house. Don't you dare open your lips to denyit."

  "It's no such a d----d thing!" cried the storekeeper with an ugly look,confident that no one had seen him hand over the two bottles toMahletonkwa; the next instant he felt Stephens's clenched fist strikehim full on his lying mouth, and he went staggering backward.

  Recovering himself, with a look of fury he threw back his right hand tohis hip for a pistol; it was in vain; he had come without one; he cast ameaning look at the revolver belted round the prospector's waist."You're a d----d brave man, aren't you?" he sneered, "when you knowyou're heeled and I aint."

  For answer Stephens instantly unbuckled his belt and hung the pistolover the horn of his saddle. "There, then," he said, and he advancedwith his hands up towards the Texan, "if you want a fist fight you canget it right here."

  "Yes," said the other, "and then have your infernal dog lay hold of me,"and he backed away from Stephens. In height and weight Backus knewhimself to be a match for the prospector, but there was a grimdetermination about the latter which cowed him. "I'll pay you out forthis," he said with oaths, still retreating before Stephens, "but I'llchoose my own time for it."

  Right behind him ran the acequia, brimming full, as it had been eversince the blasting, but Backus, stepping backwards with his eyes fixedon his enemy, forgot that it was there; he put one foot over the edge ofthe bank, lost his balance, and fell with his whole length in the water.He emerged, streaming, on the opposite bank, and rescued his hat whichhad fallen off and was floating away. Then rising, he shook his fist andpoured out more curses upon Stephens, who, thinking him sufficientlypunished, did not choose to follow him farther. He waited a minute insilence till he saw Backus walk off towards the pueblo, then turning hisback on his late adversary he remounted and quickly loped on to overtakehis companions.

  The prospector's brain was in a whirl as he rode through the freshmorning air and thought over the exciting events that had crowded oneupon another since sunrise: the beating of Josefa, the arrest of thecacique, the news of the abduction of Manuelita, and lastly hiscollision with Backus. The first was already past history, and he hadsatisfied himself that though the Indian girl must have suffered a gooddeal she would undoubtedly recover and be all right again; what began tobother him a little now was the somewhat equivocal position in which hehad placed himself with regard to her by taking her under his protectionand establishing her next door to him in the pueblo under the care ofReyna.

  "Well," he thought, "folks may say what they like about it. I didn't seeany other way on the spur of the moment to make her safe; and now,looking back, I don't see that I could have done anything different. Iffolks want to talk they must just talk, and that's all there is in it. Iguess I can stand the racket. If Tito brings Felipe back alive theyshall get married right away, but if the cacique's bullet has laid thepoor chap out, then I shall see what I can do to fix her up good somehowwhen I get back."

  It was perhaps characteristic of him that now, when he was embarked onan expedition full of unknown perils, he said to himself easily "when Iget back," without considering for a moment that ere that time came hisbones might be bleaching white in some remote gulch, like those of thelone prospector whose tragic end had afforded so much amusement toMahletonkwa and his band.

  As for the arrest of the cacique, that, too, was past history, seeingthat it was made for an offence that he had now settled to condone. Hedid not repent of his own action in the matter, either of the arrest orthe condonation, but he could not help feeling a certain surprise as hethought of the ease with which the arrest had been effected. The angrychieftain had certainly proved astonishingly meek. As a fact, Stephensmixed so little with men that he was unconscious himself of the powerthere was in him to dominate others when possessed by strongindignation, and roused to defend the weak from wrong, as he had beenthat morning. Ordinarily quiet and self-contained in manner, speaking ina gentle voice, and showing an expression of mildness in the blue eyesthat had gained him the name of Sooshiuamo, he was capable at times ofbeing transformed by an energy that seemed something outside his commonself, and by the contrast made him appear to be the very embodiment ofsuperior and irresistible force.

  It was perhaps as well for Backus that Stephens did not know that thestorekeeper's greed of gain was at the bottom of the trouble; since hehad deliberately whetted the Navajos' craving for whiskey and thendoubled the price of it to them. It was their desire to compel Sanchezto pay them off instanter, and enable them to procure more liquor at anyprice, that had moved them to the extreme step of seizing his daughter.

  But Stephens could not know this. All he knew was that she was gone, andthat his one burning desire now was to rescue her from this mostmiserable fate that had overtaken her. Of what that fate was likely tobe, there was in his own mind a
t this moment no manner of doubtwhatever. Sioux and Shoshones, Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Kiowas andComanches, the wild Indians, one and all, dealt out the same horriblefate to those who were unhappy enough to fall alive into their hands.The men were tied to the stake, or spread-eagled on the ground, androasted by a slow fire, the fiends, who danced round with hideous yells,cutting slices from the living flesh of their victim and eating thembefore his eyes. No refinement of torture was spared until deathmercifully released him from his agonies. The fate of a woman was worse.If she escaped being scalped and mangled on the spot, because hercaptors preferred to carry her away with them, she became the commonproperty of the band, and the helpless victim of brutal outrage.Stephens had seen one sad-eyed, heart-broken captive who had beenrescued from the clutches of the Sioux, and the memory of her woful taleseemed to ring in his ears now as he rode. And he had been in Denverwhen the dead body of a white woman, on which the Cheyenne Dog-Soldiershad worked their will, was brought in from the burnt ranch where theyfound her. The mangled body was placed in a room before burial, and themen of the city were taken in, a few at a time, to view the ghastlymutilation, and learn what an Indian war meant for their wives anddaughters. Denver was young then, and three-fourths of its people weremen of fighting age. Stephens could never forget the faces of those menas they returned from that room where the poor remains lay. Some cameout sick and faint; some with faces deadly pale and burning eyes andtight-shut lips; and some blaspheming aloud and hurling curses on themonsters whose pleasure and delight it was to work such abhorred wrongon poor human flesh.

  How vividly it all came back to him as he pressed rapidly forward afterhis companions; his heart grew hot within him while he pictured tohimself the girl whose charming face he knew so well, and whom he hadcome to regard with such a friendly liking, now in the grasp of ruthlesshands. Well, he would rescue, if indeed any rescue were possible, orperish in the attempt.

  "More he could not; less he would not; Forwards, till the work be done."

  The hoof-strokes of the mare seemed to beat time to the verse.

  He overtook the cacique and the two younger men just where the trailthey were following left the valley and entered the mountains. It wasrougher going here, and Alejandro jumped off and ran behind to ease themule as they pushed in single file up the rocky path. After journeyingthus for some time they came to a beautiful little grassy park of a fewacres, ringed around with dark pines, and with a small stream runningthrough it. The Indians dismounted; the prospector sat in his saddle andlooked at them. Were they in earnest in this expedition, or were theyonly trifling with him? They had hardly been going three hours, and herethey were calling a halt already.

  "Dismount for a short instant, Sooshiuamo," said the cacique. "We willgive the beasts water here, and let them eat a few mouthfuls of grass.It is better so."

  Stephens was not aware that it was the custom of the Indians to haltevery couple of hours or so on a journey; they believe that the fewminutes' rest given thus to their horses enables them to last outbetter, while American frontiersmen commonly make longer stages andlonger halts. But as he had deliberately put himself under the guidanceof these men, he thought it better to adopt their methods. He slackedhis cinch, and, pulling off the bridle, allowed the mare to graze.

  The Indians rolled cigarettes and smoked.

  "Beautiful place, Sooshiuamo," said the cacique, who was standing up andlooking around admiringly on the little valley. "How good the mountaingrass is. I love this valley."

  "Yes, it's just what you say, Cacique," answered Stephens; he knew theIndians loved this country which they now, as always, regarded as theirown. He often wondered how much they felt the beauty of it in theirsouls, or whether with them it was a sort of physical instinct, like theyearning horses and cattle feel for their native pastures.

  "I love this valley," repeated the cacique; "just down there is where,with one companion, I killed seven Navajos." He pointed with the handthat held the cigarette to the lower end of the park.

  "You killed seven Navajos!" said Stephens, looking at him with surprise."When was that? How did you manage it?"

  "It was in the time of the war," answered the other proudly. "TheNavajos used to hide here in the mountains all the time, and fall uponour people when we were at work in our lands. We could not stir outsidethe pueblo then without arms for fear of being waylaid by the rascals.And our scouts used to come up here in the mountains, too, and watchalong the trails to see if any of the Navajos were prowling about, andgive the alarm. Once I came up here on scout with another man ofSantiago; and we hid and lay all night in that hill," he pointed to arocky summit shaggy with pines that rose hard by. "And we struck thetracks of seven Navajos who were prowling about here to wait for theirchance to make a descent upon our people in their fields. And for dayswe lay up there and watched them, and they never knew it, for we keptvery still. And the third day we saw them making a sweat-house, and weknew they were going to have a bath. They built their house down therein the brush by the creek, and they covered it with willow twigs andsods to keep in the steam, and they made a fire and heated the stonesred-hot, and carried them into the house and poured on water. And six ofthem left their arms outside with their clothes, and went into the bath,and the seventh covered the door with a blanket to keep in the hotsteam. And my comrade and I crawled up on them through the brush veryquickly, and making no noise, while the seventh Indian held the blanketover the door. And there I shot him with my gun,"--he threw up his rifleto his shoulder, and took aim at an imaginary Navajo as he spoke, hisface glowing with pride and excitement over the recollection,--"andthere he fell down dead. And we leaped forward, for we had stolen upvery close behind his back, and the six Navajos inside came scramblingout of the sweat-house one after another, and we cracked their skulls,so, with our tomahawks, crack, crack, crack,"--he made an expressivepantomime of dealing heavy blows on a stooping foe,--"and we killed themall, every one. There was no chance for them; they could not escape. Andwe took their scalps and the plunder, and brought them home. It was agreat triumph. Yes, I do love this valley."

  "I don't doubt it," said the American; "you must have been very muchpleased with yourselves. You scored there."

  "Oh, we always scored against the Navajos," returned the other,"whenever we had fair play. The only way they ever could best us was bysneaking round like wolves and catching some of our men at work and offtheir guard; but fighting man to man we were far the better warriors. Wealways beat them then, as I did right here. Yes, I love this place. Butcome, Sooshiuamo, it is time for us to be moving again."

  Forwards, forwards ever, through the shadow of the pine woods, over thesilent carpet of brown fir-needles, where the sudden squirrel chatteredand barked his alarm ere he rushed to the safety of his tree-top, overopen grassy meadows and along willow-fringed streams where the mountaintrout leaped and darted in the eddies. It was indeed a lovely land, richin timber, rich in pasture, rich, too, as Stephens knew, in gold andsilver, perhaps even in diamonds--who could tell? What tragedies,though, of torturer and tortured it had seen in the past,--ay, and waslikely to see again; nay, what hideous things might not that unhappygirl be enduring now somewhere in its wild recesses! That thought neverleft Stephens for a single moment. The high, park-like country up herewas much more open now that the trail had left the rugged defiles thatled up into it. He urged his mare forward alongside the cacique's horse.

  "When we catch up with the Navajos, Cacique," said Stephens, "what isyour plan?"

  "Ah," answered the cacique, "we must try the best way we can. If we cancatch them off their guard we will fight them perhaps, and give it themhot. But if they are in a strong place like the Lava Beds ahead of uswhere we cannot get at them, we must try and make terms with them. Butit will not be easy to catch them at a disadvantage and fight them; sovery likely Don Nepomuceno will be glad to make terms. If he pays themwell and gets his daughter back, it will be the best thing we can do."

  There was a certain businesslike
air of familiarity with the wholematter apparent in the cacique that struck Stephens. Evidently thecarrying off of Manuelita belonged to a class of incidents that were byno means unusual according to his experience. As the prospector rodealong pondering this fact, he reflected that Salvador was a man nowabout forty years of age, and that for thirty-five out of those fortyyears his people and the Navajos had been deadly enemies. It was onlythe recent conquest of the latter by the Americans that had put them onthe novel footing of peace. Mutual slaughter and the carrying off ofwomen had been the normal condition of things during the greater partof his life.

  "I gather from what you say about ransom," said the American after ashort silence, "that you think the Navajoes would be willing to restorethe senorita if they were paid. But do you think Don Nepomuceno and DonAndres will be content to recover her like that? Will not the Navajos becertain to have treated her shamefully, and will her father and herbrother be content to get her back without taking vengeance? Will theybe content before they have shed blood for her wrongs?"

  It jarred upon all his instincts of race feeling to even approach thesubject of Manuelita's wrongs to this Indian. The Navajoes and Pueblosmight be mutually hostile, and the Pueblo cacique for the present washis friend, but he was an Indian after all, a member of the race towhich belonged those Sioux and Cheyennes whose dreadful deeds wereburned in upon the American's brain. Ill-treatment of women captivesmakes an unbridgeable division between race and race. It constitutes

  "----the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame, That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to flame."

  Nevertheless, so great was his anxiety on the subject that he had brokenthrough the reserve natural to him in this matter.

  Before answering, the cacique threw a look of pity at him. It wasneither pity for her lot, nor for his state of anxious suspenseconcerning it. It was the contemptuous pity of superior knowledge forthe uninstructed person who did not understand Navajos and their ways.

  "She's all right," said he; "the Navajos won't do her any harm unlessthey are driven to kill her."

  "You don't mean to tell me that's true?" cried Stephens eagerly. "Ican't understand how it can be. I know some things about the plainsIndians, and I know no woman is spared by them for one hour after shebecomes a captive. Do you mean to say that the Navajos are differentfrom all other Indians?"

  The cacique laughed with conscious superiority.

  "Of course they are different," he answered, "and they always have been.Didn't I say before that they are very foolish, ignorant people? And itis quite true that they are afraid to use violence to captive women, andI will tell you why. It is all because of a foolish religion of theirown that they have. You know they are mere heathens; they don't knowanything about heaven and purgatory and the rest of it, about all thethings the padre tells when he comes to see us. They have foolishstories which they believe, and which the devil has taught them."

  Stephens could not help interrupting him. "But how about thatturkey-feather business of your own," he asked, "and your sacredsnakes?"

  The cacique looked shocked. "Oh, those are our own Santiago mysteries,"he said seriously; "we believe what the padre tells us, but we have ourown Shiuana--the spirits--to deal with as well, and we have our own wayof doing it. That is right for us. But these Navajos have most foolishideas about the next world. You know they think when they die they willgo to another place?"

  "Oh, yes," said the American, "the happy hunting-grounds."

  "That's not the name they give it," said the cacique, "but all the sameit's a place they want to go to very much, where they can keep plenty ofsheep and horses upon grass richer than the grass of the ChuscaMountains. But they think, silly fools, that before they can get to thisgood place they have to cross a dreadful dark river that it is very hardto get over. If they can't get over they think that they must wanderabout for ever in cold and dark and misery. And they think that there isin the next world a wonderful old woman, whom they call Whailahay, andshe lives there and knows all the fords of this river, and without herhelp no one can get over it. So they all want to please her very much.But, you see, Whailahay is a woman, and is very angry if women areill-treated, at least so they think; and then, if they haven't let thewomen on earth have their own way in everything, and do just what theyplease, Whailahay is very cross with the men, and she won't help them toget across the dreadful dark river to the good place when they die, butleaves them to starve for ever, wandering about shivering and wretched.It is a most foolish story, and the result is that the Navajos spoiltheir women entirely. They dare not lay a hand on them to keep them inproper order"; he looked full in Stephens's eyes as he said this, andStephens looked in his eyes, and each knew the other was thinking of thebeating of Josefa.

  "No, they dare not touch them in any way against their will," continuedthe cacique, "and the women are masters of the men, and all inconsequence of a foolish story about an old witch. Don't you think it isa foolish story, Sooshiuamo?"

  Stephens's heart bounded with exultation, and he felt as if a heavy loadwere lifted from his breast.

  "Foolish!" he cried, turning in his saddle with a triumphant laugh ofjoy, "why, Cacique, don't you see, if that's so she'll be safe. Foolish!I think it's the very best story I ever heard in my life. Bully for oldMadam Whailahay!"