Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The cacique gave him leave, father."

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II

A LONE HAND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, Don Estevan!" he began suddenly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III

BLASTING THE ACEQUIA

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

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

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