Читать книгу The Mesa Trail - H. Bedford-Jones - Страница 6

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Coravel Tio sold curios in the old town of Santa Fé. He also sold antiques, real and fraudulent; he had a wholesale business in Indian wares that extended over the whole land.

Coravel Tio was one of the few Americans who could trace their ancestry in an unbroken line for three hundred years. It was almost exactly three hundred years since the ancestor of Coravel Tio had come to Santa Fé as a conquistador. Coravel Tio was wont to boast of this, an easily proven fact; and, boasting, he had sold the conquistador’s battered old armour at least fifty times.

When the boasts of Coravel Tio were questioned, he would admit with a chuckle that he was a philosopher; and do not all philosophers live by lying, señor? There was great truth in him when he was not selling his ancestor’s armour to tourists—and even then, if he happened to like the looks of the tourist, he would gently insinuate that as a business man he sold fraudulent wares and lied nobly about them, but that in private he was a philosopher. And the tourists, liking this quaintly naïve speech, bought the more.

It was a big, dark, quiet shop, full of Indian goods and weapons, antique furniture that would have made Chippendale’s eyes water, ivories, old paintings, manuscripts from ancient missions. A good half of Coravel Tio’s shop was not for sale at any price. Neither, said men, was Coravel Tio.

He was a soft-spoken little man, quiet, of strange smiles and strange silences. His was the art of making silence into a reproof, an assent, a curse. The world of Santa Fé moved about Uncle Coravel and heeded him not, shouldered him aside; and Coravel Tio, knowing his fathers to have been conquistadores, smiled gently at the world. His name was usually dismissed with a shrug—in effect, a huge tribute to him. Talleyrand would have given his soul to have been accorded such treatment from the diplomats of Europe; it would have rendered him invincible.

One of those rare men was Coravel Tio whose faculties, masked by childish gentleness, grow more terribly keen with every passing year. His brain was like a seething volcano—a volcano which seems to be extinct and cold and impotent, yet which holds unguessed fires somewhere deep within itself.

Upon a day, some time following the meeting of Mehitabel Crump with Thady Shea, this Coravel Tio was standing in talk with one Cota, a native member of the legislature then in session.

“But, señor!” was volubly protesting the legislator, with excitement. “They say the majority is assured, that the bill already drawn, that the capital is to be moved to Albuquerque at this very session!”

“I know,” said Coravel, passively, his dark eyes gently mournful.

“You know? But what—what is to be done? Shall those down-state people take away our capital? We must prevent it! We must do something! It’s this man Mackintavers who is at the bottom of it, I suppose——”

Coravel Tio fingered a blanket which topped a pile beside him—a gaudy red blanket. He regarded it with curious eyes.

“I fear this is not genuine—it does not have the old Spanish uniform red,” he murmured, as though inwardly he were thinking only of his wares. Then suddenly his eyes lifted to the other man, and he smiled. In his smile was a piercing hint of mockery like a half-sheathed sword; before that smile Cota stammered and fell silent.

“Oh, señor, this matter of the capital!” answered Coravel Tio, softly. “Why, for many, many years men have said that the capital is to be moved to Albuquerque; yet it has not been moved! Nor will it be moved. And, Señor Cota, let me whisper something to you! I hear that you have bought a new automobile. That is very nice, very nice! But, señor, if by any chance you are misled into voting for that bill, it would be a very sad event in your life; a most unhappy event, I assure you! Señor, customers await me. Adios.”

As the legislator left the shop, he furtively crossed himself, wonder and fear struggling in his pallid features.

The merchant now turned to his waiting customers. Of these, one was a Pueblo, a Cochiti man as the fashion of his high white moccasins and barbaric apparel testified to a knowing eye. The others were two white men who together approached the curio dealer. Coravel Tio stepped to a show case filled with onyx and other old carvings, and across this faced the two men with an uplift of his brows, a silent questioning.

“You’re Mr. Coravel—Coravel Tio?” queried one of the two. The dealer merely smiled and nodded, in his birdlike fashion. “Can we see you in private?”

“I have no privacy,” said Coravel Tio. “This is my shop. You may speak freely.”

“Huh!” grunted the other, surveying him in obvious hesitation. “Well, I dunno. Me and my partner here have been workin’ down to Magdalena, and we had a scrap with some fellers and laid ’em out. Right after that, a native by the name of Baca tipped us off that they was Mackintavers’ men, and we’d better light out in a hurry. He give us a loan and said to tell you about it, so we lit out here.”

Coravel Tio seemed greatly puzzled by this tale.

“My dear sir,” he returned, slowly, “I am a curio dealer. I do not know why you were sent to me. Do you?”

“Hell, no!” The miner stared at him disgustedly. “Must ha’ been some mistake.”

“Undoubtedly. I am most sorry. However, if you are looking for work, I might be able to help you—it seems to me that someone wrote me for a couple of men. Excuse me one moment while I look up the letter. What are your names, my friends?”

“Me? I’m Joe Gilbert. My partner here is Alf Lewis.”

Coravel Tio left them, and crossed to a glassed-in box of an office. He opened a locked safe, swiftly inspected a telegraph form, and nodded to himself in a satisfied manner. He returned to the two men, tapped for a moment upon the glass counter, meditatively, then addressed them.

“Señors, I regret the mistake exceedingly. Still, if you want work, I suggest that you drive over to Domingo this afternoon with my cousin, who lives there. You may stay a day or two with him, then this friend of mine will pick you up and take you to work.”

The second man, Lewis, spoke up hesitantly.

“Minin’ is our work, mister. We ain’t no ranchers.”

“Certainly.” Coravel Tio smiled, gazing at him. “You will not work for a native, my friends. Ah, no! Be here at two this afternoon, please.”

The two men left the shop. Outside, in the Street, they paused and looked at each other. The second man, Lewis, swore under his breath.

“Joe, how in hell did he know we was worried over workin’ for a greaser boss?”

Gilbert merely shrugged his shoulders and strode away.

Within the shop, Coravel Tio turned to the waiting Indian and spoke—this time neither in Spanish nor English, but in the Indian tongue itself. As he spoke, however, he saw the stolid redskin make a slight gesture. Catlike, Coravel Tio turned about and went to meet a man who had just entered the shop; catlike, too, he purred suave greeting.

A large man, this new arrival—square of head and jaw and shoulder, with small gray eyes closely set, a moustache bristling over a square mouth, ruthless hardness stamped in every line of figure, face, and manner. He was dressed carelessly but well.

“Morning,” he said, curtly. His eyes bit sharply about the place, then rested with intent scrutiny upon the proprietor. “Morning, Coravel Tio. I been looking for someone who can talk Injun. I’ve got a proposition that won’t handle well in Spanish; it’s got to be put to ’em in their own tongue. I hear that you can find me someone.”

Regretfully, Coravel Tio shook his head.

“No—o,” he said, in reflective accents. “I am sorry, Mr. Mackintavers. My clerk, Juan Estrada, spoke their language, but he joined the army and is still in service. Myself, I know of it only a word or two. But wait! Here is a Cochiti man who sells me turquoise; he might serve you as interpreter, if he is willing.”

He called the loitering Indian, and in the bastard Spanish patois of the country put the query. Mackintavers, who also spoke the tongue well, intervened and tried to employ the Indian as interpreter. To both interrogators the Pueblo shook his head in stolid negation. He would not serve in the desired capacity, and knew of no one else who would.

“It is a great pity he is so stubborn!” Coravel Tio gestured in despair as he turned to his visitor. “I owe you thanks, Mr. Mackintavers, for getting my wholesale department that order from the St. Louis dealer. I am in your debt, and I shall be grateful if I can repay the obligation. In this case, alas, I am powerless!”

“Well, let it go.” Mackintavers waved a large, square hand. He produced cigars, set one between his square white teeth, and handed the other to Coravel Tio. “You can repay me here and now. A man at Albuquerque sent a telegram to that Crump woman in your care. Where is she?”

“What is all this?” Coravel Tio was obviously astonished. “Señor, I am a curio dealer, no more! You surely do not refer to the kind-hearted Mrs. Crump?”

Mackintavers eyed him, chewing on his cigar. Then he nodded grimly.

“I do! Is she a particular friend of yours?”

“Certainly! Have I not known her these twenty years? I buy much from her—bits of turquoise, queer Indian things, odd relics. Her mail often comes here, remaining until she calls for it. I am a curio dealer, señor, and in other matters I take no interest.”

“Hm!” grunted Mackintavers. “Has she been here lately?”

“No, señor, not for three months—no, more than that! Mail comes, also telegrams.”

“D’you know where she is?” demanded the other, savagely.

Dreamily reflective, Coravel Tio fastened his eyes upon the right ear of Mackintavers. That ear bore a half-healed scar, like a bullet-nick. Beneath that silent scrutiny the other man reddened uneasily.

“Let me see! My wife’s second cousin, Estevan Baca, wrote me last week that he had met her in Las Vegas. Everyone knows her, señor. If I can send any message for you——”

“No. Much obliged, all the same,” grunted the other. “I’ll probably be at the Aztec House for a few days. Let me know in case she comes to town, will you? I want to see her.”

With exactly the proper degree of bland eagerness, Coravel Tio assented to this, and Mackintavers departed heavily. The merchant accompanied him to the door and watched him stride up the narrow street, cursing the burros laden with mountain wood that blocked his way. Then, smiling a trifle oddly, the descendant of conquistadores returned to the waiting man from Cochiti pueblo.

“Do you know why that man wanted an interpreter?” he asked the Indian, in the latter’s native tongue. The redskin grinned wisely and shook the black hair from his eyes.

“Yes. But it is not a matter to discuss with Christians, my father.”

Coravel Tio nodded carelessly. The question was closed. The Pueblo folk are, of course, very devoted converts to the Christian faith; yet those who know them intimately can testify that they sometimes have affairs, perhaps touching upon the queer stone idols of their fathers, which do not bear discussion with other Christians. They do not pray to the old gods—perhaps—but they hold them in tremendous respect.

“You came to tell me something,” prompted the curio dealer, gently.

The Indian assented with a nod. He leaned against one of the wooden pillars that supported the roof, and began to roll a cigarette while he talked.

“Yesterday, my father, I was near the painted caves of the Colorado, and I stood above White Rock Cañon looking down at the river. There on the other side of the water I saw the strangest thing in the world. I went home and told the governor of the pueblo what I had seen, and it was his command that I come here and tell you also, for this is some queer affair of the white people.”

Coravel Tio said nothing at all. The Pueblo lighted his cigarette and continued:

“Upon the east side of the river and cañon, not so well hidden that I could not see it, was a camp, and in that camp were a white man and a white woman. I have never before seen white folk able to reach that place, unless it were the Trail Runner who takes pictures of us and sells them to tourists. These were strangers to me. One was a very large woman. The man was tall, but he acted very strangely. He acted as though God had touched his brain. So did they both.”

“In what way?” asked Coravel Tio, sharply.

“In every way, my father. The man wore no shoes, and the hot rocks hurt his feet so that he limped. I saw him spring on the woman, and they fought. She beat him off and pointed a gun at him. Then he seemed to be weeping like a woman, and he grovelled before her. She threw something far off on the stones, and I think it was glass that broke—a bottle, perhaps.”

“Oh!” said Coravel Tio. “Oh! Perhaps it was.”

“There were other strange actions,” pursued the stolid red man. “I could not understand them——”

“No matter.” Coravel Tio made a gesture as though dismissing the subject. “Could you get to that camp from your pueblo?”

“Of course, by crossing the river, by swimming the water there. But that may be a hard thing to do, my father.”

“Undoubtedly, but you will do it, and I will pay you well. There is a package to give that woman. Wait.”

Coravel Tio went to his little box of an office, seated himself at the desk, and began to write in a fair, round hand. The epistle required neither superscription nor signature:

The burlap sack proved to contain some interesting contents. The two small sacks in the centre were even more interesting. The samples have been assayed with the following results:

Numbers one to five, quartzitic with bare traces of brittle silver ore; no good. Numbers six to fifteen, barytes, perhaps five dollars a ton; no good. Number sixteen is strontianite. This is converted into certain nitrates used in manufacture of fireworks and in beet sugar refining. Tremendously valuable and rare. This, señora, is enough.

I think that M. has scented those assays. He is asking for you, but I have made him look toward Las Vegas. To-morrow you will find two men at Domingo who wish work—they will be there until you arrive: Joe Gilbert and Alf Lewis. Meet me there also, please. I will take one-third interest in Number Sixteen as you suggest, and will furnish whatever money you desire on account. I enclose an advance sum.

I shall have articles of partnership ready. Suppose you meet me day after to-morrow, at Domingo. You must give me location, etc., in order to arrange details of filing, land and mineral right lease, etc. Be careful about the new explosives law, unless you already have a permit.

“Being a woman,” reflected Coravel Tio, “she should know that the most important thing in this letter is the very end of it.”

He sealed the letter, placed it upon a thick sheaf of bank notes, wrapped the parcel in oiled silk and again in a small waterproof Navaho saddle blanket. This package he gave to the waiting redskin.

“It must go into the hands of that large woman, and no other,” he said, gravely. “If you fail, there is trouble for all of us—and perhaps for the gods of the San Marcos also!”

At these last words a flash of keen surprise sprang athwart the Indian’s face; then he took the package and turned to the doorway without response. Coravel Tio looked after him, and smiled gently.