Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

Among the crowd was Tito. Tito was a friend of Felipe's, and what was a source of curiosity to others was maddening to him. There came into his mind the thought of the American, and he resolved to call him to the rescue.

Stephens, after despatching his letters, as he believed, on the previous day, had returned to the house of Don Nepomuceno. He had done all he could to set the proper authorities in motion, and now, finding that the Navajos had taken themselves off and not returned, so that it was impossible to go on with the negotiations, he took his leave of the Sanchez family and hastened back to the pueblo. The more he thought of the fury the cacique had displayed in the morning, the more uneasy he felt as to what might happen when he should overtake Felipe and Josefa. But when he learnt, on his arrival, that nothing further was known since the cacique had galloped away on their tracks, he settled in his mind that no news was good news, and waited quietly for matters to develop themselves. He rose before dawn the following morning, only to be told once more that nothing had been heard of the fugitives or of the cacique, and he was now busy wiping out his rifle, when there came a hasty knock at the door, and, forgetful of the bulldog, Tito burst headlong into the room. "Oh, Don Estevan!" he exclaimed breathlessly, "Salvador is back, and he is beating his daughter like fury. Perhaps he will kill her."

"The dickens you say!" said the American, dropping his work abruptly and making for the door. "Where's Felipe?"

"I don't know," answered Tito. "He's not there. Perhaps the cacique has killed him."

Tito knew nothing of the sort, but the temptation to deepen the shadows of a harrowing tale is quite irresistible.

"Where are they?" said Stephens, as soon as they were in the open air.

"Here, in his house," cried Tito eagerly, leading the way.

Stephens paused and stood irresolute. "After all, it's none of my funeral," growled he to himself. "I haven't any call to interfere. And I haven't got any weapon on me neither." He turned back to get his pistol, but paused again. "No," he said, "I don't want it. Maybe I sha'n't do anything, and if I do, I'd better go through on my nerve." He knew that an appeal to physical force was idle where the odds were one against a hundred, and that his only chance lay in moral influence.

He followed Tito. It was plain enough where the scene was taking place by the crowd at the door. Stephens went up. The sound of blows was audible from inside, but no cry was heard from the victim. "Where are the chiefs? Where are Tostado and Benito and the rest?" he asked. He would gladly have had the support of the seniors of the village, but they were much too dignified to appear at this performance. The mob consisted of boys, young men, and some of the poorer and less well-thought-of people.

No one answered Stephens's question. He listened; the blows continued. "He can't be allowed to murder her," he cried. "The whole pueblo will get into a row with Government if that happens." He collared two or three boys out of the press. "Here you, Jose, Tomas, Juan Antonio, run and fetch Tostado here and the other chiefs. Say I want them to come."

The boys obeyed him; and the American, squeezing into the gap he had made in the crowd, knocked loudly at the door. There was no answer to the knock, but the blows stopped. He knocked again, calling, "Hullo, Salvador! Hullo there!"

"Look out, Don Estevan," called out some of the boys. "He's furious. Maybe he'll go for you."

He listened for an answer, but none was given. Then came the sound of the whip again. Stephens shouted again, but in vain. He looked round for the chiefs. There was no sign of any of them yet.

"I can't stand this any longer," said he. "Give me room, you fellows." He stood back four or five feet from the door, and raising his right foot dashed it against the lock.

The fastenings were old and the door flew open. He stepped over the threshold and entered. The crowd behind him hung back. In the middle of the floor, full length on her face, lay the form of Josefa. Her arms were bare; she had thrown them up to protect her head, and the marks of the whip were only too visible. She lay perfectly silent and still, a slight quivering of her limbs alone showing that she was alive. The Indian stood across her with his uplifted whip in his hand. He glared fiercely at the American who advanced towards him.

Stephens did not meet the cacique's eye. He was looking down at the prostrate figure on the ground. "So you've brought her back, Salvador," he remarked in an unruffled, every-day voice.

"Yes, I have," he replied brutally; "and I've given her something to keep her from ever running away again."

"It looks like it," said Stephens.

He took one hand out of his pocket, stooped down, and felt her head. "It looks like she'd never run anywhere again," he said.

He did not really believe that she was killed, but he thought it politic to assume so. His position placed him absolutely at the mercy of the Indian; but his voice, his manner, and his action conveyed the assumption that it was absolutely impossible that the Indian should dream of attacking him.

His coolness succeeded. The cacique lowered his whip and stepped back, while Stephens moved the girl's arms gently from her head. They fell limp on the earthen floor.

Stephens had seen some wild doings in Californian mining towns, but he never had seen a woman beaten in his life. Those limp arms sent a queer thrill through him. A sudden fury rose within him, but he mastered it. He felt her head all over slowly and carefully to see if the skull was fractured – as indeed it might well have been had she been struck with the loaded whip-handle. This gave him time to think of his next move.

"If you've killed her, you'll be hanged for it, Salvador," he said at last, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. "You and she are not citizens, but you'll be hanged all the same. The law of the Americans reaches here; understand that."

The Indian, whose passion was really more under control than seemed to be the case, was somewhat cowed at Stephens's deliberate statement, but he rejoined sullenly, "She's not dead. Lashes don't kill."

"You will have to answer for it if she dies," said Stephens getting up. He had satisfied himself that the girl was not seriously injured.

"Not to you then," said the Indian, his courage reviving, when he realised that the threat was, after all, blank cartridge, seeing that the girl was alive. He tried to work himself into a rage again. "What do you break into my house for and interfere with me? I'll do what I like with my own." He stepped forward close to Stephens, between him and Josefa. "Go out, or I'll kill you!" he said, raising his voice to a tone of fury.

For a moment the American paused, uncertain. The Indian was a powerful man, full as big and strong as himself, well armed with knife, pistol, and loaded whip, to say nothing of his fifty friends outside the door.

The hesitation was momentary. "I can't leave this girl to that brute's mercy," he said to himself. "Perhaps I can back him down."

He looked Salvador square in the eyes. "Where's Felipe?" said he calmly. "You must answer for him, too. Have you killed him?"

"None of your business," said the Indian roughly. "Be off!" and he raised his hand.

At this moment Josefa, hitherto as still as a corpse, turned her face from the floor, but without rising. She looked up at Stephens. "He gave him two shots," she said, in a voice wonderfully steady considering the pain she was enduring. "I saw him fall."

"Then I arrest you for the murder of Felipe. You are my prisoner. Give up your arms."

The only answer the cacique made to this demand was to take out his revolver, but instead of surrendering it he thrust the muzzle in Stephens's face, cocking it as he did so.

The steady gaze of the American met, without quailing, the black, flashing eyes of the Indian. Grey eyes against black, white man against red, the strife is as old as the history of the continent they stood upon; perhaps it will last as long.

"You can kill me, I know, of course," said the American, speaking very slowly and distinctly; "but you can't kill all the soldiers of the Government. You may kill me to-day, but to-morrow the soldiers will come from Santa Fé and take you prisoner; and if you make your people resist they will destroy you. The Navajos were twenty thousand, but the soldiers conquered them. You are only three hundred. They will conquer you and take you away as they did the Navajos, as they did the Jicarillas, as they have done the Modocs." He raised his left hand very gently and took hold of the pistol barrel. "Don't destroy your people, Salvador," he continued. "You know I wish them well. Loose it."

The Indian's grasp relaxed; he drew a deep breath and stepped back. Stephens lowered the pistol to his own right hand, muzzle upwards, uncocked it, and placed it in his waist-belt.

"Now come with me to my room," said he, taking him gently but firmly by the arm. The struggle for the mastery was over; the Indian had yielded; he obeyed unresistingly. As they stepped out of the house, Stephens said to Tito, "Tell the women to see to the girl."

Outside they found Tostado and the other chiefs approaching – not too fast. It was very plain that they did not want to interfere in the matter. Stephens took his man towards them.

"Look here, Tostado," said he as soon as they met, "I have arrested Salvador for shooting Felipe. I am going to take him to Santa Fé, to the agent and to the governor. Now I want some of you to go along and see that it is all right and square."

Stephens had been reflecting during the course of the night on the events of the previous day, and it had occurred to him that accidents did sometimes happen, and that his letters to the governor and the general might possibly go astray. He had no special reason to suspect what Mr. Backus had actually done, but he had a general feeling of uneasiness with regard to the San Remo post-office. The idea had been already in his mind to go to Santa Fé and lay the affair of the Navajos before the authorities in person, and now this difficult matter of the arrest of the cacique was a double reason for doing it.

The Indians began to converse among themselves.

"Come along to my room, then, and talk it over," said Stephens, and he went ahead with his prisoner, reluctantly followed by the chiefs.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FEE IS ACCEPTED

The whole party came into Stephens's room and settled themselves round the wall on the floor, much as they had done the night before. Stephens seated his prisoner on a stool in the middle, and taking the cacique's revolver from his belt laid it on the table. As he did so, he drew the attention of Tostado, who was next to him, to the two recently discharged chambers in the cylinder. "Those were the shots," said he.

"Maybe so, Don Estevan," answered the Indian suavely. "Doubtless you are right in what you say, as you always are. We know that your honour is very wise and very just. But before we do anything about it we want to know what Salvador has to say; we have not heard him yet."

"I do not want to conceal anything," said the cacique abruptly. "I saw them from the top of the hill that leads down from the mesas to La Boca. I went straight to the river to them. He was on foot driving my horse, trying to drive him into the river. I fired at him once, twice. He ran away and stopped. I took my horse and my daughter, and I brought them home. He ran after us, but he fell down. I saw him lying there the last thing from the hill. If he is dead, he is dead. I do not know any more."

His story was so straightforward and simple that it was convincing.

"Where did you say all this happened?" asked Stephens.

"On the river, down below La Boca a league," answered the Indian.

The chiefs began to question him about the details of the affair. He described to them the position of the fugitives when he overtook them, and the refusal of the terrified horse to enter the swollen river.

"Then Felipe was not riding your horse," observed Stephens, who was listening, for in deference to him they spoke in Spanish for the time being.

"No, he was on foot. He was driving the horse," was the reply of the cacique.

"I suppose your daughter was on the horse?" said Stephens.

"Yes, he was taking them both along," answered the Indian.

"How old is she?" asked the prospector. "She looks almost a woman grown."

The Indian reflected a little while. "She was a little child so high," he answered at last, "when there was the great war in the States," and he held his hand at a height to indicate a child of ten years old.

"She must be eighteen now, then," said Stephens.

"I suppose so. Yes, if you say so," admitted the Indian.

"Then she is not a child," said Stephens, "and she can marry him or anyone she likes. You have no right to prevent her. Understand that. This is a free country. By the law a woman is as free as a man; she may go where she likes and marry whom she likes. She is not a slave, and don't you think any such thing. No American can strike a woman; that is the deepest of shames."

He paused after this, for him, unusually long speech, which was intended quite as much for the benefit of the other Indians as the cacique. The American felt a little elated at the thought that single-handed he had been able to arrest their cacique in their midst, and he could not resist improving the occasion.

There was a minute's silence, and then Tostado fixed his keen black eyes on the American's face. "Listen to me, Señor Don Estevan," he said. "The Americans have their way; that is good for them. The Mexicans have their way; that is good for them. And the wild Indians, – the Utes, and the Comanches, and the Navajos too, – they have their own ways. And we, we have our laws. We don't change them. I know if one Indian kills another, then the law of the Americans is to judge him; but the rest of the things we manage among ourselves. The Government gives us that right. We have our own alcalde. We have our own customs. And when men and women do wrong together we beat them. Then they are afraid. That is why our women are so good. Not like the Mexicans. That is good for us. We do not want to change."

"But," cried Stephens, "if it is your custom to beat the women like dogs, you ought to change it. Everybody knows that that it is shameful."

"For the Americans," said the old Indian, with the air of a man making an extremely reasonable concession, "I do not say anything. Let them have their ways, and treat their women as seems good to them. So they are content; that is right. But we have our ways; we do not want to change; we are content to be as we are."

Stephens felt nonplused. It seemed to him that he was not much of a success as a missionary on the rights of women, and he felt, too, that in this discussion he had wandered from the main point. After all, he had arrested his man for the murder of Felipe, and not for beating his daughter, though his motive in doing so had been to rescue the helpless woman.

"You have heard Salvador's story," he said to the chiefs abruptly. "Suppose we go and hear that of the witness, if she is able to speak."

They assented at once, and Stephens, bidding Salvador himself remain where he was, led the way. On arriving at the house, they found the girl laid on some skins in an inner room. Stephens went into the room and knelt down beside her, the others remaining beyond the open door.

She opened her eyes, and perceiving who it was gave him a meaning look. "You have saved me once," she whispered; "can you save me again? She is making poison for me. I have seen"; and her eyes turned towards her step-mother, who was mixing something in a gourd at the end of the room.

Stephens gave a low whistle. "This is a queer business," he muttered to himself. "I wonder if the girl's telling lies. Maybe she's off her nut. Likely enough, after such a hammering. The old woman doesn't look such a bad lot. After all," he went on thinking, "perhaps I had better get her away. These folks can be pretty low-down when they try."

"Can you move?" said he to the girl. "Can you walk?"

"Yes," she answered; "I am quite strong. Only I am looking how to escape."

Neither fatigue, nor bodily pain, nor mental torture, had robbed her of her senses, or tamed her spirit. Since the blows which she had endured with such stoical courage had ceased, she had been collecting herself, conquering the pain, and trying to think. She had recognised a friend in the touch of Stephens's hand, and in the tones of his voice. She had made up her mind to appeal to him if possible for aid, and now here he was at her side.

"Can you take me away?" she whispered.

"All right," he answered. "I'll see what I can do."

"Probably," he mused, "they will say all sorts of ugly, low-down things about me for this, but I can't leave her here at the mercy of these woman-beaters, and that's all there is to it. If I can take two or three of the principal men along, I don't see why she shouldn't come to Santa Fé with us, if she's up to it; but I don't want any more confounded scandal than I can help."

He got up and went to the door and addressed Tostado. "She is able to get up, and to talk," he said. "It will be best to have her come over to my room there and hear what she has to say."

They assented. The American felt all through that though the chiefs did not directly oppose him, their feeling was against him. He led the way, and they followed reluctantly. Josefa, a blanket thrown over her, and drawn over her head so as to conceal her face all but the eyes, accompanied Stephens, but so stiffly and painfully did she walk from the effects of the violence she had suffered, that the idea of her being able to undertake a journey became out of the question.

They entered the American's room, and sat down as before, the girl sitting on the ground near the fireplace. She answered the questions put to her in a low but firm voice.

Her statement tallied exactly with the cacique's. She had seen her lover's blood flow, and the last she had seen of him as she looked back was his figure stretched on the sand. After hearing her evidence, Stephens felt no doubt that Felipe had been murdered.

"I must secure her somehow," he said to himself. "She'll be wanted as a witness. I suppose his confession alone won't be enough. And she certainly believes the cacique's wife'll kill her if I leave her there. She aint fit to go to Santa Fé, and it would be simply brutal to ask it of her. No, I'll have to try another plan. The only way to save her is to have them acknowledge that I have the right to protect her."

"Tostado," said he, addressing the fine old man whose wisdom and force of character made him by far the most influential of the chiefs, "you told me just now that you had your own customs that you did not want ever to change."

"Yes, señor," said he.

"Well, it is your custom, is it not, that an unmarried woman belongs to her father, and that he can give her to anyone he pleases?"

"Yes," said Tostado; "that is, he can give her to any man in the pueblo that is not of her family. But we should not allow him to give her to any man in another pueblo. We do not allow the women of Santiago to go away."

"Well," continued Stephens, "last night when I had blasted the ditch for you, you all came here and wanted me to stay with you always; and you said that everything you had was mine, and that whatever I asked you for you would give me. Is not that so?"

"Yes," said Tostado simply. "You speak the truth." A general murmur of assent confirmed his statement.

"Now," said Stephens, "I'm going to ask you for something, and I shall see whether Indians mean a thing when they say it. I ask you for the daughter of Salvador – for Josefa."

There was a general movement of surprise. The Indians talked eagerly to one another, but in their own language, so that they were unintelligible to the American. Presently Tostado spoke.

"How do you mean?" said he, addressing Stephens. "As your wife?"

"As wife, as servant, as anything I like," he answered. "You say now she belongs to Salvador. I want her to belong to me."

The Indians again conversed among themselves.

"But she's promised to Ignacio," said her father to the others. "The padre's coming to-morrow."

"That makes no odds," said one. "Ignacio doesn't want her now she has run off with Felipe."

"It doesn't make any difference if he does," said another. "He's a cowardly old creature; he won't do anything."

"Give him another daughter," said a third, "instead. One that won't run away," he added in an aside for the benefit of the rest. "Perhaps he will give you six cows if you warrant her to stop." The three cows of old Ignacio's bargain were no secret in the pueblo.

The general opinion seemed to be that after the affair of last night both Salvador and Ignacio would be well rid of Josefa on any terms.

"Besides," said the first speaker, with a meaning look towards the American, "if he really wants her, so much the better for you. He will be as good as your son-in-law. He will never give you up to the agent and the governor then. Much better do it at once."

Salvador rose from his seat, and going towards the fireplace took the girl by the shoulder.

"Come here," said he.

She winced at his touch, but she got up and obeyed him. He took her to the American. "Here she is," he said aloud before them all. "I give her to you. Keep her and do what you like with her. From now on she is not mine any longer but yours."

"Do you all agree to that," said Stephens, turning to the chiefs.

"Yes," was the reply. "Yes; it is good."

Stephens turned to the crowd who were peeping in at the door. "Tell Reyna I want her, some of you," said he.

In a minute the old squaw was fetched, and pushed, looking rather sheepish and surprised, into the middle of the room. While she was coming, Stephens had disappeared into the inner room and now came out again with some bags in his hands.

"Look here, Reyna," he began. "They have given Josefa to me. She belongs to me now. I want you to take care of her for me. I'll pay you for your trouble. Here is flour and meat and coffee and sugar for the present."

Reyna was taken aback, and looked shyly round at the company. The Indians at once confirmed what Stephens had told her. She took the bags from his hands, and made her way out again through the crowded doorway with a queer look on her puzzled face. She did not quite know what this unaccountable American was up to.

Stephens followed her with the girl. They entered the house of Reyna together.

"You will be quite safe here with her," he said in a kindly voice. "I'll see that you come to no harm."

The girl turned to him to thank him, but no words would come. She was fairly worn out with the strain of this last trying scene, added to her fatigue and cruel anxiety about Felipe's fate.

"Here, Reyna," said the prospector, noticing her condition, "this girl's about played out. You had better see to her at once," and turning on his heel he left the house, closing the door carefully behind him.

As soon as he was outside he looked closely at the group of young men. "Tito," he called.

Tito came to him, and they walked together a little apart from the rest. "Look here, Tito," began Stephens, "I've got a job for you. I know you are a friend of Felipe's. I want you to go and look for him. Take my little mule and put your saddle on him. Go over to the Rio Grande and look along near the river about a league below La Boca. If you find him dead, get a man from there to help you with the body. If he's only wounded, have him taken care of, or bring him back if you can. Tell him he need not be afraid now. Here's two dollars for expenses. Mind you get some corn for the mule at La Boca. Off with you as soon as you can."

Tito did not need telling twice. "I'll do just what you say, Don Estevan," he said, as he stowed the money in a little pouch on his belt, and away he flew like the wind.

The American returned to his own house. He found Tostado awaiting him at the door. The other chiefs had disappeared. Salvador's wife had come with food which she had prepared for her husband.

"It was time for breakfast, Don Estevan," explained Tostado, "and they have gone home. The woman has brought Salvador's here."