Stepsons of Light Part 6

It was pleasant enough, at least, on this day of hoping. Stargazer shuffled by farm and farm, and turned aside at last to where, with ax and pick and team and tackle, a big man was grubbing up mesquite roots. Unheeded, for the big man wrought st.u.r.dily, Charlie rode close; elbow on saddlehorn, chin on hand, he watched the work with mingled interest and pity.

"There," he said, and shuddered--"there, but for the grace of G.o.d, goes Charlie See!"

The big man straightened up and held a hand to his aching back. His face was brown and his hair was red, his eyes were big and blue and merry, and his big, homely, honest mouth was one broad grin.

"Why, if it ain't Nubbins! Welcome, little stranger! Hunting saddle horses--again?"

"Why, no, Big Boy--I'm not. Not this time."

Big Boy rubbed the bridge of his nose, disconcerted. "You always was before. Not horses? Well, well! What say we go a-visitin', then?" He squinted at the low sun. "I'll call this a day, and we'll mosey right home to my little old shack, and wolf down a few eggs and such. Then we'll wash our hands and faces right good, catch us up some fresh horses out of the pasture, and terrapin up the road a stretch. Bully big moonlight night." He began unhooking his team.

"Fine! I just love to ride. Only came about fifty miles to-day, too."

"I was thinkin' some of droppin' in on old man Fenderson. I ain't been over there since last night. Coalie! You, Zip! Ged-dap!"

"Mr. Adam Forbes," said Charlie, "I've got you by the foot!"

"Now if you was wishful of any relaxations," said Adam after supper, "you might side me up in the feet hills to-morrow, prospectin'."

"I might," said Charlie; "and then again I mightn't. Don't you go and bet on it."

Adam stropped his razor. "You know there's three canons headin'

off from MacCleod's Tank Park? And the farthest one, that big, steep, rough, wide, long, high, ugly, sandy, deep gash that runs anti-gogglin' north, splittin' off these spindlin' little hills from the main Caballo and Big Timber Mountain--ever been through that?

'Pache Canon, we call it--though we got no license to."

"Part way," said Charlie. Then his voice lit up with animation. "Say, Big Chump, that's it! Them warty little hills here--that's what makes us look down on you folks the way we do. And here I thought all along it was because you was splay-foot farmers, and unfortunate, you know, that way like all nesters is. But blamed if I don't think it was them hills, all the time. We got regular old he-mountains, we have. But these here little old squatty hills clutterin' up your back yard--why, Adam, they ain't respectable, them hills ain't--squanderin' round where a body might stub his toe on 'em, any time. You ought to pile 'em up, Adam. They look plumb shiftless."

"That listens real good to me. You got more brains than people say."

Adam sc.r.a.ped tranquilly at cheek and chin, necessitating an occasional pause in his speech. "Now you can see for yourself how plumb foolish and futile a little runt of a man seems to a people that ain't never been stunted."

"'Seems' is a right good word," said Charlie. He blew out a smoke ring. "You sure picked the very word you wanted, that time. I didn't think you had sense enough."

Adam pa.s.sed an appraising finger tip over his brown cheek; he stirred up fresh lather.

"Yes," he said musingly, "a little sawed off sliver like you sure does look right comical to a full-grown man. Like me. Or Hob Lull." He paused, brush in air, to regard his guest benignantly. "I wonder if girls feel that way too? Miss Lyn Dyer, now? Lull, he hangs round there right smart--and he's a fine, big, upstanding man." He lathered his face and rubbed it in. "First off, I fixed to a.s.sa.s.sinate him quiet, from behind. You know them two girls don't hardly know where they do live--always together, Harkey's house or Fenderson's. So I mistrusted, natural enough, that 'twas Miss Edith he was waitin' on.

But I was mistook. Just in time to save his life from my b.l.o.o.d.y and brutal designs he began tolling Miss Lyn to one side to look at sunsets and books and such, givin' me a chance to buzz Miss Edith alone. Good thing for him. That's why I'm lettin' you tag along to-night--you can entertain Pete Harkey and Ma Fenderson and the old man, so's they won't pester me and Hobby."

"Like fun I will! If you fellows had any decent feeling at all you'd both of you clear out and give me a chance."

"Now, deary, you hadn't ought to talk like that--indeed you hadn't!"

protested Adam. "You plumb distress me. You ought to declare yourself, feller. I'd always hate it if I was to slay you, and then find out I'd been meddlin' with Hobby Lull's private affairs. I'd hate that--I sure would!"

"Well now, there's no use of your askin' me for advice." Charlie's eyebrows shrugged, and so did his shoulders. "You'll have to decide these things for yourself. Say, you mangy, moth-eaten, slab-sided, long, lousy, lop-eared parallelopipedon, are you goin' to be all night dollin' up? Let's ride!"

"Don't blame you for bein' impatient. Hob, he's there now." Face and voice expressed fine tolerance; Adam looked into a sc.r.a.p of broken mirror for careful knotting of a gay necktie.

"I won't be sorry to see Hob once more, at that," observed Charlie.

"Always liked Lull. Took to him first time I ever saw him. That was seven years ago, when I was only a kid."

"Only a kid! Only--Great Caesar's ghost, what are you now?"

"I'm twenty-five years old in my stocking feet. And here's how I met up with Lull. El Paso had a big ball game on with Silver City, and Hob, he wanted to be umpire. n.o.body on either team would hear of it, and not one of the fifteen hundred rip-roarin', howlin' fans. It was sure a mean mess while it lasted. You see, there was a lot of money up on the game."

"And who umpired?"

"Hob."

IV

"Money was so scarce in that country that the babies had to cut their teeth on certified checks."

--_Bluebeard for Happiness._

"The cauldrified and chittering truth."

--THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.

"As I was a-tellin' you, when I got switched off," said Adam, in the starlit road, "I found gold dust in 'Pache Canon nigh onto a year ago.

Not much--just a color--but it set me to thinkin'."

"How queer!" said Charlie.

"Yes, ain't it? You see, a long time ago, when the 'Paches were thick about here, they used to bring in gold to sell--coa.r.s.e gold, big as rice, nearly. Never would tell where they got it; but when they wanted anything right bad they was right there with the stuff; coa.r.s.e gold.

All sorts of men tried all sorts of ways to find out where it came from. No go."

"Indians are mighty curious about gold," said Charlie. "Over in the Fort Stanton country, the Mescaleros used to bring in gold that same way--only it was fine gold, there. Along about 1880, Llewellyn, he was the agent; and Steve Utter, chief of police; and Dave Easton, he was chief clerk; and Dave Pelman and Dave Sutherland--three Daves--and old Pat Coghlan--them six, they yammered away at one old buck till at last he agreed to show them. He was to get a four-horse team, harness and wagon, and his pick of stuff from the commissary to load up the wagon with. They was to go by night, and no other Indian was ever to know who told 'em, before or after--though how he proposed to account for that wagonload of plunder I don't know. I'll say he was a short-sighted Injun, anyway.

"Well, they started from the agency soon after midnight. They had to go downstream about a quarter, round a fishhook bend, on account of a mess of wire fence; and then they turned up through a _cienaga_ on a corduroy road, sort of a lane cut straight through the swamp, with the _tules_--cat-tail flags, you know--eight or ten feet high on each side. They was going single file, mighty quiet, Mister Mescalero-man in the lead. They heard just a little faint stir in the _tules_, and a sound like bees humming. Mister Redskin he keels over, shot full of arrows. Not one leaf moving in the _tules_; all mighty still; they could hear the Injun pumping up blood, glug--glug--glug! The white men went back home pretty punctual. Come daylight they go back, police and everything. There lays their guide with nine arrows through his midst.

And that was the end of him.

"But that wasn't the end of the gobbling gold. Fifteen years after, Pat Coghlan and Dave Sutherland--the others having pa.s.sed on or away, up, down, across or between--they throwed in with a lad called Durbin or something, and between them they honey-swoggled an old Mescalero named Falling Pine, and led him astray. It took nigh two months, but they made a fetch of it. Old Falling Pine, he allowed to lead 'em to the gold.

"Now as the years pa.s.sed slowly by, Lorena, the Mescaleros had got quite some civilized; this old rooster, he held out for two thousand plunks, half in his grimy clutch, half on delivery. He got it. And they left Tularosa, eighteen miles below the agency, and ten miles off the reservation, about nine o'clock of a fine Sat.u.r.day night.

"Well, sir, four miles above Tularosa the wagon road drops off the mesa down to a little swale between a sandstone cliff and Tularosa Creek. They turned a corner, and there was nine big bucks, wrapped up in blankets, heads and all! There wasn't no arrows, and there wasn't nothing said. Not a word. Those nine bucks moved up beside Falling Pine, real slow, one at a time. Each one leaned close, pulled up a flap of the blanket, and looked old Falling Pine in the eye, nose to nose. Then he wrapped his blanket back over his face and faded away.

That was all.

"It was a great plenty. The plot thinned right there. Falling Pine, he handed back that thousand dollars advance money, like it was hot, and he beat it for Tularosa. They wanted him to try again, to tell 'em where the stuff was, anyhow; they doubled the price on him. He said no--not--_nunca_--nixy--_neinte_--he guessed not--_nada_--not much--never! He added that he was going to lead a better life from then on, and wouldn't they please hush? And what I say unto you is this: How did them Indians know--hey?"

"Don't ask me," said Adam. "I've heard your story before, Charles--only your dead Injun had thirty-five arrows for souvenirs, 'stead of nine. The big idea was, of course, that where gold is found the white man comes along, and the Indian he has to move. But all this is neither here nor there, especially here, though heaven only knows what might have been under happier circ.u.mstances not under our control, as perhaps it was, though we are all liable to make mistakes in the best regulated families; yet perhaps I could find it in my heart to wish it were not otherwise, as the case may be."

"Nine arrows!" said Charlie firmly.

"Young fellow!" said Adam severely. "Be I telling this story or be I not? I been tryin' to relate about this may-be-so gold of mine, ever since you come--and dad burn it, you cut me off every time. I do wish you'd hush! Listen now! Of course there's placer gold all round Hillsboro; most anywheres west of the river, for that matter. But it's all fine dust--never coa.r.s.e gold beyond the river--and it runs so seldom to the ton that no Injun would ever get it. So, thinks I, why not look in at Apache Canon? It's the plumb lonesomest place I know, and I don't believe anybody ever had the heart to prospect it good. So I went up to Worden's and worked up from the lower end.