Читать книгу Lone Pine - R. B. Townshend - Страница 5

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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."

Stephens moved along to the points indicated and examined in a critical manner the work that had been effected. "Yes, that looks as if it would do all right," he said in approving tones. "Now then, you fellows, give me room, and keep still a few minutes, and I'll show you some fireworks."

He produced from his pockets the powder and fuse, and proceeded to make his, to them, mysterious preparations, the eager and inquisitive circle of red men pressing as near as possible, and almost climbing over each other's shoulders in order to get a good view. Their excited comments amused Stephens greatly, and in return he kept up a running fire of jests upon them.

But it is not always easy to jest appropriately with men who stand on a different step of the intellectual ladder from yourself; and without his dreaming of such a thing, one of his laughing repartees suggested to his Indian auditors a train of thought that their minds took very seriously.

Stephens's action in ramming down a charge of powder, and then tamping it, had not unnaturally reminded them of an operation which was the only one connected with gunpowder that they had experience of. "Why, he's loading it just like a gun," cried a voice from the crowd; "but what's he going to shoot?"

"Shoot?" retorted Stephens, without looking up, as he adjusted the fuse with his fingers; "why, I'm going to shoot the sky, of course. Don't you see how this hole points right straight up to heaven? You sit on the mouth of it when I touch her off, and it'll boost you aloft away up over the old sun there"; and raising his face he pointed to the brightly glowing orb which was already high overhead.

At his words a sort of shiver ran around the ring of red men. Religion is the strongest and the deepest sentiment of the Indian mind, and the rash phrase sounded as if some violation of the sanctity of what they worshipped was intended. What! Shoot against the sacred sky! Shoot with sacrilegious gunpowder against the home of The Shiuana, of "Those Above"? The deed might be taken as a defiance of those Dread Powers, and bring down their wrath upon them all.

Then came a crisis.

"Bad medicine! witchcraft!" exclaimed a voice with the unmistakable ring of angry terror in it. To the Indian, witchcraft is the one unpardonable sin, only to be atoned for by a death of lingering torture.

A murmur of swift-rising wrath followed the accusing voice. The American was warned in a moment that he had made a dangerous slip, and he at once tried to get out of it with as little fuss as might be.

"You dry up!" he retorted indignantly. "Witchcraft be blowed! You ought to know better than to talk like that, you folks. I'm telling you truth now. That was only a little joke of mine, about shooting the sky. There's no bad medicine in that. We Americans don't know anything about such fool tricks as witchcraft. Here's all there is to it. I'm simply going to blast this rock for you. It's just an ordinary thing that's done thousands of times every day in the mines all over the United States."

"Ah, but there are great wizards among the Americans, and their medicine is very bad," cried the same voice of angry terror that had spoken before. "Are you working their works? are you one of them?"

Stephens glanced quickly round the ring of dark eyes now fixed on him with alien looks. He saw there a universal scowl that sent a chill through him.

"There's a lot of explosive stuff round here besides my blasting-powder," he said to himself, "and it looks as if I'd come mighty nigh touching it off, without meaning it, with that feeble little joke. What a flare-up about nothing!"

There flashed across his mind on the instant a story of three stranger Indians, who by some unlucky chance had violated the mysteries of the Santiago folk and had never been heard of more.

For himself he had every reason, so far, to be satisfied with his treatment, but now, at last, he had happened to touch on a sensitive spot with the Indians, and behold, this was the result. He saw that he must take a firm stand, and take it at once. He straightened himself up from his stooping position, dusting off the earth that adhered to his hands.

"Now, look here, you chaps," he said peremptorily, as he stood erect in the middle of the ditch, "you want to quit that rot about witches right here and now. There's only one question I'm going to ask you, and that's this—do you want your ditch fixed up, or don't you? You say it has been a trouble to you for hundreds of years, and here I stand ready to fix it for you right now in just one minute. There's only one more thing to be done, and that's to strike the match. Come, Cacique, you're the boss around here. Say which it is to be. Is it 'yes' or 'no'?"

Salvador, the cacique of Santiago, was no fool. Personally he was as firm a believer in witchcraft as any of his people, nor would he have hesitated for a moment to utilise such a charge as had just been made to rid himself of an enemy. But he was also well aware that there were times when it was far more expedient to suppress it, and that this was one of them.

"Nonsense, Miguel!" he exclaimed, turning abruptly on the Indian who had first raised the dreaded cry; "this Americano is a good man, and no wizard, and your business is to hold your tongue till you are asked to speak. It is the proper office of your betters to see to these matters, and you have no right nor call to interfere."

The lonely American heard him speak thus with an intense sense of relief. The power of the chief was great, and his words were strong to exorcise the malignant spirit of fanaticism.

"Good for you, Salvador!" he exclaimed, as the cacique's reproof ceased, and left a visible effect on the attitude of the crowd, "that's the talk! I'm glad to see you've got some sense. Your answer is 'yes,' I take it."

"Assuredly I mean 'yes,' Sooshiuamo," answered the cacique; "we want you to go on and finish your work. I say so, and what I say I mean. But if all is ready, as you declare, before you strike the match we will offer a prayer to Those Above that all may be well."

"Why certainly, Cacique," assented Stephens, "I've got no sort of objection to make. You fire ahead." He breathed more freely now, but he was conscious of a vastly quickened interest in the religious methods of the Indians as he watched the cacique withdraw a little space from the edge of the ditch and turn, facing the east, the other Indians following his example, and standing in irregular open formation behind him, all facing towards the east likewise.

"Didn't reckon I was going to drop in for a prayer-meeting," said the American, with a humour which he kept to himself, "or I might have brought my Sunday-go-to-meeting togs if I'd only known. But, by George! when I was mining over on the Pacific slope, the days when things was booming over there, if we'd had to stop and have prayers on the Comstock lode every time we were going to let off a blast, I should rather say that the output of bullion in Nevada would have fallen off some."

He listened intently to the flow of words that the cacique, acting as the spokesman of his people, was pouring forth, but they were utterly unintelligible to him, for the prayer was couched in the language of the tribe, and not in civilised Spanish. All he could distinguish were the "Ho-a's" that came in at intervals from the crowd like responses.

"I wonder what he's saying, and who or what he's saying it to?" he meditated questioningly. "What was it that Nepomuceno Sanchez was telling me only last week,—that they didn't have service in that old Roman Catholic church of theirs more than once in a blue moon, and all the rest of the time they go in for some heathen games of their own in their secret estufas in the pueblo; he swore that one time he dropped on to a party of them at some very queer games indeed, on the site of an old ruined pueblo of theirs 'way off up on the Potrero de las Vacas—swore they had a pair of big stone panthers up there, carved out of the living rock, that they go and offer sacrifices to. I didn't more than half believe him then, but this makes me think there's something in it. What the blazes are they at now?" A chorus of "Ho-a's," uttered with a deep, heartfelt intonation, like the long a-a-mens at a revival meeting, rose from the crowd. There rose also from them little tufts of feather-down that floated upwards to the sky, soaring as it were on the breath of the worshippers, outward and visible symbols of the petitions that ascended from the congregation. The cacique took a step in advance, holding in his hands two long feathers crossed; he stooped down and began to bury them in the loose, light soil. Stephens, his curiosity now intensely aroused, was moving forward a little in order to see more closely what was taking place, but an Indian instantly motioned him back in silence, finger on lip, with a countenance of shocked gravity, making the irreverent inquirer feel like an impudent small boy caught in the act of disturbing a church service.

"Perhaps at this stage of the performances they'd like to have me take off my hat," he soliloquised. "Well, mebbe I will." He looked round at the motionless figures reverently standing with bowed heads. "Do at Rome as Rome does, so some folks say. These Indians themselves don't have any hats to take off, but they look so blamed serious over it that I'm dead sure they would if they wore 'em. Dashed if I don't do it; here goes!" and he swept his broad sombrero from his head, subduing his face to a decorously grave expression.

But the repressed humour of the American reasserted itself beneath this enforced solemnity of his exterior. "Makes me think of the story of the man the Indians in California once took prisoner, only instead of putting him to the torture they painted him pea-green and worshipped him as a deity. It's not so bad as that yet," he went on to himself, "but I don't much like taking any sort of part in this show, nohow." He looked at the hat which he was devoutly holding in his hand as he stood amongst the congregation, and his face assumed a quizzical expression. "I wonder now if by doing this I aint, by chance, worshipping some blamed idol or other. I used to be a joined member oncet, back there in Ohio, of the United Presbyterian Church. I wonder what poor old Elder Edkins would say now if he caught sight of me in this shivaree. However, I guess I can stand it, if it don't go too far. So long as they stick to this tomfoolery and only worship those turkey feathers, or whatever they are, that the cacique's been burying, I'll lay low. But if they want to play me for an idol, and start in to painting me pea-green, there'll be a rumpus. What a time their prayer-meeting does take, anyhow! Ah, thank goodness, here's the doxology."

The cacique had finished his incantation over the crossed feathers, and interred them properly. He now rose and dismissed the assembly, which instantly broke up, the serious expression rapidly dissolving from all faces, as it does from those of a congregation pouring out of church.

It was on the tip of Stephens's tongue to begin, "Why, Cacique, you've forgot to take up the collection. Where's your plate?" as he saw Salvador approaching him, but a sobering recollection of the awkward way in which his last joke had missed fire checked the temptation to be flippant as too dangerous.

"My game," thought he, "is to cut the gab and come to the 'osses, as the English circus-manager said; or else they might call on Brother Miguel to give an exhortation, and who knows which end of the horn I should be liable to come out at then?"

"Well, Cacique," he said aloud, "through? so soon? You don't say! Are you really ready now?"

"Yes," answered the Indian, "now you begin. Do your work."

"All right then," rejoined the American; "if that's so, by the permission of the chairman I'll take the floor." He sprang down into the ditch, drew out a match, and turned round to the cacique. "Now, Salvador," he called out, "make your people stand clear. Let them go right away."

They did not need telling twice, and there was a general stampede, the bolder hiding close by, the most part running off to the distance of a rifle-shot. The cacique gathered up the buckskin riata of his plump mustang, which stood there champing the Spanish ring-bit till his jaws dropped flakes of foam, and retired to a safe distance. Stephens stood alone in the ditch and struck the match. It went out; he took off his broad felt hat, struck another match, and held it inside. This time the flame caught, and he applied it to the ends of the fuses, and retreated in a leisurely manner round the back of a big rock near by. He found two or three of the boldest Indians behind it, and pushing them back stood leaning against the rock. They squeezed up against him, their bright black eyes gleaming and their red fingers trembling with excitement. They had never seen a blast let off before.

Boom! boom! went the first two charges, and the echoes of the reports resounded through the foothills that bordered the valley. Several Indians started forward from their hiding-places.

"Keep back there, will you!" shouted Stephens. "Keep 'em back, Salvador. Tito," he said familiarly to the Indian who was next him beside the rock, "if you go squeezing me like that I'll pull your pigtail." Tito's long black hair was done up and rolled with yellow braid into a neat pigtail at the nape of his neck. The Pueblo Indian men all wear their hair this way, and are as proud of their queues as so many Chinamen.

Tito laughed and showed his gleaming teeth, as he nudged the boy next to him at the American's joke. Boom! went the third charge. The practical miner looked up warily to see that no fragments were flying overhead, and then stepping from under cover waved his arm. At the signal the Indians poured from their hiding-places and rushed eagerly down to the scene of action.

The blast was a great success. Some tons of stone had been shattered and dislodged just where it was necessary, and it was plain to see that the ditch might now be made twice as big as before. Without any delay the Indians swarmed in like ants, and began picking up the broken stone with their hands, and carrying it out to build up and strengthen the lower side of the embankment.

While the workers were thus busily engaged, the cacique came forward, holding his horse by the riata of plaited buckskin. He made a deep, formal reverence before the man who had wrought what for them was nothing less than a miracle,—the man by whose superior art the solid rock had been dissipated into a shower of fragments, and who now stood quietly looking on at the scene of his triumph.

"It is truly most wonderful, this thing that you have done," began the chief, "and we will be your devoted servants for ever after this"; and he bowed himself again more deeply than before, as deeply as when he had buried the sacred feathers a few minutes earlier.

The native humour of the American asserted itself at once. "Here's the pea-green deity business on," he murmured to himself. "So far, so good; I don't mind the deity part, but I draw the line if he trots out his paint-pot; then I'll begin to kick."

"Since the days of Montezuma," continued the cacique, with an eloquent wave of his hand, "no benefactor like you has ever come to the red men; no blessing has been wrought for them such as you have done. Would that our departed ancestors had been allowed to see with their own eyes the great, the glorious manifestation of power that has been shown to us, their children—" and his mellifluous oratory rolled on in an unceasing stream of praise.

"By George!" said Stephens to himself, "I wonder if right now isn't my best time to bounce him about the silver mine. I did calculate to bring it up before the council of chiefs when I saw a favourable opportunity, but though the rest of 'em aren't here at this moment the cacique's talking so almighty grateful that perhaps I'd better strike while the iron's hot." He listened a moment to the profuse expressions of gratitude that poured from the red man's lips. "If he only means a quarter of what he's saying, I ought to have no difficulty in getting him to back me up. But perhaps I'd best tackle him alone first, and make sure of his support." He waited until the cacique had finished his peroration.

"Glad you're pleased, I'm sure," said Stephens in reply, "and here's my hand on it," and he shook the cacique's hand warmly in his. "Just let's step this way a little," he went on quietly. "I've got a word or two to say to you between ourselves," and the pair moved away side by side to a distance of a few yards from the site of the blasted rock.

"You see, working together like this, how easily we've been able to manage it," began the American diplomatically. "I'm an expert at mining, and your young men have carried out the execution of this job admirably. Now, look at here, Cacique; what I wanted to say to you was this. Why shouldn't we go in together, sort of partners like, and work your silver mine together in the same sort of way? I could make big money for both of us; there'd be plenty for me and plenty for you and for all your people, if it's only half as good as I've heard tell"; he paused, looking sideways at the Indian as he spoke to note what effect his suggestion produced on him. At the words "silver mine" the chief's face, which had been smiling and gracious in sympathy with the feelings he had been expressing in his speech, suddenly clouded over and hardened into a rigid impassibility.

"I don't know what you mean by our silver mine, Don Estevan," he answered frigidly. "There is no such thing in existence."

"Tut, tut," said Stephens, good-humouredly, "don't you go to make any mystery of the thing with me, Cacique. I'm your good friend, as you acknowledged yourself only a minute ago. I mean that old silver mine you've got up there on Rattlesnake Mountain, Cerro de las Viboras as you call it. You keep it carefully covered up, with logs and earth piled up over the mouth of it. Quite right of you, too. No use to go and let everybody see what you've got. I quite agree to that. But you needn't make any bones about it with me who am your friend, and well posted about the whole thing to boot."

In reality Stephens was retailing to the Indian the story of the mine as far as he had been able to trace it among the Mexicans. This was the first time that he had even hinted to any of the Santiago people that he knew anything at all about it, or had any curiosity on the subject. Salvador maintained his attitude of impassibility.

"I don't know who has told you all this," he answered, "but it is all nonsense. Put it out of your mind; there's nothing in it."

But in spite of these denials Stephens believed his shot about the mine had gone home, and he knew also that the cacique was reputed to be fond of gain.

"Oh, I understand you well enough, Salvador," he rejoined with easy familiarity. "Of course you're bound to deny it. It's the old policy of your tribe. That's all right. But now, as between you and me, it's time there was a new departure, and you and I are the men to make it. I tell you I know just what I'm talking about, and there's money in it for both of us." He thought he saw the dark eyes of the Indian glisten, but his lips showed small sign of yielding.

"It's no use, Don Estevan," the latter said firmly. "I cannot tell you a word now, and I don't suppose I ever shall be able to. Keep silence. Let no one know you have spoken to me about such things."

At this moment loud cries broke out from where the workers were busy, and Stephens, wondering what was up, listened intently to the sounds. He thought he could distinguish one word, "Kaeahvala," repeated again and again. The cacique turned round abruptly. A huge rattlesnake, which had been disturbed by the shock of the blast, had emerged from a crevice in the rocks, and showed itself plainly to view wriggling away over the open ground.

"After him, after him, Snakes!" called out the cacique in a loud voice. "He is angry because his house has been shaken. To the estufa without delay! You must pacify him."

On the instant there darted forth in pursuit half a dozen young men of the Snake family, and at the same moment Faro, with an eager yelp, announced his ardent intention of pacifying the snake in his own fashion, and away went the dog, who had been compelled to endure, much against his will, the tedium of the Indian prayer-meeting and the oratory of the cacique, and now proceeded to grow frantic with excitement at the chance of joining independently in the chase.

"Come back there, Faro," cried Stephens, in an agony of alarm for his favourite; "come back there, will you!" But Faro was headstrong and pretended not to hear.

The cacique too was filled with alarm, but the object of his solicitude was not the dog but the reptile. "Quick, quick!" he cried to the young men; "be quick and save him from that hound."

And then Stephens saw a sight that astonished him out of measure. The Indian youths had the advantage of Faro in starting nearer the snake; they ran like the wind, and the foremost of them, overtaking the reptile before Faro could get up, pounced upon him and swung him aloft in the air, grasping him firmly just behind the head and allowing the writhing coils to twine around his muscular arm. One of his companions produced a bunch of feathers and stroked the venomous head from which the forked tongue was darting, while the baffled Faro danced around, leaping high in his efforts to get at his prey. Stephens ran up and secured his dog, and looked on at this extraordinary piece of snake-charming with an amazement that increased every moment.