CHAPTER II
A LONE HAND
The sun was just rising above the mesas, or flat-topped hills thatformed the eastern horizon of the view from the village, as Felipeknocked at the door in the row of mud-built houses. His knock wasanswered by a fierce growl from a dog, and a loud "Come in" in Spanishfrom a vigorous human voice. He opened the door, which was unlocked, andstepped cautiously inside. From the brown blankets of a bed that stoodby the wall a brindled bulldog was emerging, and apparently proposed todrive the intruder out.
"Dry up, Faro, will you?" said the same voice in English, addressing thedog. "Can't you see it's only Felipe?"
The dog, who evidently had a general theory that all Indians would bearwatching, lay down again sulkily on the bed, and Felipe advanced to thefireplace. The owner of the voice was seated on a low stool, bendingover the coals, with his back to the door.
"Good-morning, Don Estevan; how are you?" said Felipe in Spanish. TheSantiago people spoke an Indian dialect of their own amongst themselves,but they used Spanish as a medium of communication with the rest of theworld.
Stephens, for that was the American's name, which in its Spanish formhad become Don Estevan, was busy cooking, and he answered withoutlooking round, "Good-morning, Felipe; how goes it?" A critic might havesaid that his Spanish accent was by no means perfect, but no more wasthe Indian's, and the pair were able to understand one another readilyenough, which was the main point.
How had this American come to be living here by himself in a remotevillage community of the Pueblo Indians? During ten long years of searchfor gold he had wandered from Colorado to California, from California toNevada, from Nevada to Montana, and from Montana back again to Colorado.The silver boom in Colorado had just begun, and then silver mines wereall the talk there. Thereupon Stephens recollected a story he had heardfrom an old prospector with whom he had once been camped in Nevada abouta deserted silver mine in New Mexico which had once been worked by theSpaniards, with the forced labour of their Indian slaves, and had sincelain idle, untouched, and even unknown. When the Spanish power wasbroken, and the Spaniards driven out, the Indians had covered up theplace 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 solvingthe mystery of the secret mine. This hope, however, was one which hecould not avow openly at the first meeting, and when he presentedhimself before the chiefs of the pueblo it was of gold and not of silverthat he spoke. He told them of his past toils and adventures, and thered men seemed to take a fancy to him on the spot. Hitherto theseIndians had persistently enforced their right to prevent any man not oftheir own blood from taking up his abode within a league of theirvillage of Santiago, a right secured to them by special grant from thekings of Old Spain. What was there about this man that melted theirobduracy? Some charm they must have found in the face of this lonewanderer, for him alone among white men had they admitted as a permanentguest to the hospitality of their most jealously guarded sanctuary.
Perhaps there was something of pure caprice in their choice; perhaps itwas in a way due to the effect of physical contrast. For in this casethe contrast between the white man and the red, always marked, was asstriking as it could possibly be. He was as fair as they were dark. Withhis white skin, his grey-blue eyes, and his curling golden hair, wornlong in frontier fashion, he was as fair as any Norseman that everboasted his descent from the ancient Vikings.
"Gold," said Tostado, one of the chiefs, as Stephens sat in the midst ofthem on the occasion of his first visit; "we ask you what sort of a lifeyou 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 thefine old chief laid his dark fingers gently on the long yellow locksthat flowed down from under the prospector's wide sombrero.
The grey-blue eyes of the far-wandered man--one who like Ulysses of oldhad withstood the buffets of capricious Fortune through many adventurousyears--found an expression of genuine friendliness in the dark orbs ofthis redskin chief, who smiled gravely at his own jest, as if inhalf-excuse of its familiarity. Tostado gazed into the white man's eyesa 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 ourprecious turquoise stones; they are the colour of our sacred jewel, theShiuamo, that I wear as the head man of the Turquoise family," and hepointed to his breast where a large polished turquoise hung from acirclet 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 Indianname, 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 henceforthSooshiuamo is one of us; he is our brother."
And in this fashion the roving gold-seeker had obtained amongst them theacceptance he desired.
Felipe, with his striped blanket gracefully draped round him, came andstood just behind his employer, but said nothing. On a rough table werea tin cup and tin plate and an iron-handled knife; a small coffee-potwas bubbling in the ashes on the hearth. Stephens held a frying-pan inhis left hand, and beside him on a tent-cloth on the floor lay a largesmooth boulder and a hammer, with which he had been pounding his toughdried meat before cooking it. He now stood up to his full height, andturning his face, flushed with the fire, to Felipe, pointed with thesteel fork held in his right hand to a great wooden chest against thewall at one side of the room. "Go and take an almud of corn and give itto the stock," said he. "Give Morgana her extra allowance."
"Yes, senor," said Felipe; and taking down three nosebags which hung ona peg in the wall, he filled them, and went out to the corral in theoutskirts of the village where the American kept his beasts. The mareMorgana was a beautiful bay, of pure Morgan stock, and the mules weresturdy little pack animals of Mexican breed. By the time they had eatentheir corn, and the boy had returned to the house with the nosebags, hisemployer had finished his meal and was washing up the dishes. Felipehung up the nosebags, and stood by the fire silent and thoughtful; itnever occurred to him to offer to help in what he looked upon as women'swork. Stephens took the wiping cloth and began to wipe up. Felipe atlast 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 tinplate. 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 hismaster 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 himkeenly. "What's the matter with you? What's up?"
"Nothing, Don Estevan--it's nothing," said Felipe. "Shall I put theminto the meadow as usual?"
"Yes, certainly," replied Stephens. "I sha'n't ride. I shall walk up theacequia to the rock I am going to blast. If I want them after, I'll comedown."
"Very well, senor," said the boy; and taking the lariats he went back tothe corral, caught the stock, and led them down the Indian road, throughthe unfenced fields of springing crops, towards the river.
At the lower end of the plough-lands a steep bank of bare earth andclay dropped sharply to the green flat fifteen or twenty feet below,through which the river ran. The plough-lands lay on a sort of naturalterrace, and were all watered by numerous channels and runlets, whichhad their sources in the great _acequia madre_, or main ditch. Thisditch was taken out of the river some miles above, where it was dammedfor the purpose, and was led along the side of the valley as high up aspossible; the pueblo was built beside the ditch more than a league belowthe dam, nearly half a mile from the river in a direct line. The grassyflat through which the river flowed remained unploughed, because it wasliable to be overflowed in flood time. It was a verdant meadow
, thecommon pasture-ground of the milch cows of the village, which wereherded here during the day by small boys and at night were shut up inthe corrals to keep them out of the unfenced crops. Felipe hobbled thethree animals in the meadow, and set to work weeding in the wheat landabove, where he could keep an eye upon them.
Some time after Felipe's departure, Stephens went to his powder-keg andmeasured out three charges of blasting-powder.
"Curious, isn't it?" said he aloud to himself as he handled the coarseblack grains in which so much potential energy lay hid,--"curious howthese Indians, hard-working folk as ever I saw, have lived two or threehundred years here under the Spanish Government, and been allowed bythose 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 theroom that he used as a storeroom; it was the inner of the two roomsthat he rented in the block of dwellings inhabited by the Turquoisefamily. Here he lived, alone and independent, simply paying Felipe atrifle to do his chores and go up to the mesas and get his fire-wood.Indoors the prospector distinctly preferred to keep himself free andunbeholden 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 justshow my good friends of Santiago here a little trick those old Spanishdrones were too thick-headed or too lazy ever to work. This fossilisedTerritory 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 allshe'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 herup."
Stephens had been so much alone in the mountains that he had got intothe solitary man's trick of talking to himself. Even among the Indianshe would sometimes comment aloud upon things in English, which they didnot understand; for in spite of their companionship he lived in a worldof 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 hispockets, first feeling carefully for stray matches inside. "Yes," hecontinued, as his fingers pried into every angle of each pocketpreparatory to filling it with explosive matter, "drones is the onlyname 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, andvitriol, just to make things hum for a change. New Mexico has got thebiggest kind of a future before her when the right sort of men comealong and turn to at developing her."
He stood in the middle of his outer room, patting himself gently invarious parts to make sure that he had got all his needful belongingsstowed away. "Now then, Faro," and he addressed the dog, who was stillcurled upon the bed eyeing his master doubtfully, uncertain whether hewas to be left at home on guard or taken out for a spree; "what thishere benighted country needs is the right kind of men and the right kindof 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 ditchand astonish their weak minds for 'em."
With yelps of joy, uttered in a bulldog's strangled whistle, Farobounded off the bed on to the earthen floor, and danced rapturouslyround his master, who was still thoughtfully feeling his pockets fromthe outside to make certain that when he reached his destination hewould not find that some quite indispensable requisite had been leftbehind. Then he bounced out of the open door into the street, scattereda pig and three scraggy chickens that were vainly hunting around afterstray grains of corn where the horses had been fed, and then halted toawait his master out by the corrals. Stephens, having at last assuredhimself that he had really forgotten nothing, came out after the dog,pulling to the door behind him, and the pair started off to walk upalongside the acequia. There was no water in it to-day, as it had beencut off up above to facilitate the work of blasting. Here and there inthe 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 byside, their heads lashed firmly by the thick horns to the yoke, as theydragged the curious old-fashioned wooden ploughs, just like thosedescribed by Virgil in the _Georgics_ two thousand years ago. In thepeach orchards near the village women were at work, and little nakedbrown children stopped their play to stare at the white man as hepassed, with the simplicity of Arcadia. After half an hour's walk hereached his destination, a rocky promontory that jutted out from thehills 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 hadcarried it so high that where it rounded the rocks a point projectedinto it, and made it too narrow and too shallow to carry the amount ofwater 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 theirsimple arts. This weak place had been a hindrance and a trial to themfrom time immemorial. If they attempted to run their ditch more thanhalf full of water it brimmed over at this point, and then broke downthe bank. It had to be patched every year,--sometimes several times inone year,--and this entailed much extra work on the members of thevillage community, who were all bound by their laws to work on the ditchwhen necessary, without pay. In fact, the repair of the ditch at thepoint of rocks was one of the stock grievances of the pueblo, everyonethinking 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 neededit most for irrigation, and everyone wanted water for his maize or hiswheat crop. No wonder, then, they were first incredulous and thenoverjoyed when by a fortunate chance Stephens happened to hear of theirdifficulty and went to examine the spot, saw at once that it was asimple matter, and offered to lend them tools, to show them how to drillthe necessary holes, and then to blast away the obnoxious rocks forthem. These Indians were familiar with firearms and knew the force ofgunpowder, but were ignorant of its use for blasting purposes; nor weretheir Mexican neighbours in this part of the country much moreenlightened. Accordingly they had accepted with joy Stephens's profferedassistance, having learned by experience to set a high value on theskill and resource of their American friend.