CHAPTER XII
PACIFYING A GHOST
"Say," asked Mr. Backus, as the pair rode out of the pueblo side by side, "how're ye getting on with the silver-mine question? Had any new developments?"
"No," replied the prospector, "I bounced them straight out about it last night, and learned nothing. They just won't open their heads on the subject at all. They simply swear there never was a mine, and I don't believe it's any use to go on working at them."
"And what'll you do next?" queried the storekeeper.
"To tell you the truth," said Stephens simply, "I've not quite made up my mind what I want to do, but I'm much inclined to chuck it up."
"Look at here," interjected Backus, "did ye ever think to try them Navajos? They used to roam all over these mountains in the old days, and they know 'em still just like a book. They know what silver is, too, for you see all their high-u-muck-a-mucks wearing plates of it all over 'em.
How about them knowing where the mine is?"
"I doubt it," returned Stephens. "They'd have sold the secret of it to the Mexicans long ago if they had known it."
"They're too suspicious of the Mexicans to do that," said the other; "they don't trust 'em. They'd be afraid they'd cheat 'em; but mebbe they might trust you or me enough to think we'd pay 'em if we promised to."
"They don't trust the Mexicans far, by all accounts," said Stephens, "I allow that much. But say--I want to know more about this fuss between Don Andres and the Navajo. How was it?"
"Oh," said Backus, "the Navajo came to the sheep camp where Andres was with his two herders. The Navajo had his squaw along. And he and Andres got to playing cards by the firelight, and Andres won all the money he had, six dollars and a half. And then the Injun got mad and swore Andres had cheated him. And Andres told him to go to Halifax! And then the Injun got madder, and drawed his butcher-knife and went for Andres right there. But Andres was too darn quick for him, and pulled his gun,--he wears a mighty nice pistol, does Andres, a Smith and Wesson nickel-plated,--and he plugged him just under the heart and laid him out. And then the squaw bawled and ran off into the woods, and Andres and the two sheep-herders were powerful frightened over what they'd done, and they chucked the body on the camp-fire to burn it up, and they packed their camp outfit and drove the sheep herd that night right away to the Ojo Escondido. But when the squaw got back to the other Injuns and told them, they just naturally knew their best plan was to come down on old man Sanchez at oncet. That's why they're here. They got here this morning, and Andres come in only a few hours ahead of 'em, about midnight last night."
"Well I'm sorry for Don Nepomuceno," said Stephens.
"And he's tarnation sorry for himself too, you bet," added the Texan.
"He's in an awful sweat over his flock of sheep. I never saw a man look sicker. Why, if the Navajos was to run off his sheep it'd bust him wide open. He's liable to have to make the original herd good to old man Baca, you see."
"By George!" returned Stephens, "I don't wonder he's in a sweat. What does he want to see me for, d'you know?"
"Wal'," replied Backus, "he reckons that as an American you might be able to help him some. The Americans are running this Territory now, and the Navajos have darned good reason to know it, and he thinks they'll mind you. I left him and some of his compadres pow-wowing away with them outside the house, but they hadn't come to no conclusion. Pretty Miss Manuelita"--he looked knowingly at the prospector--"was just crying her eyes out over her brother inside. She thinks he'll be killed, sure."
Stephens touched his mare with the spurs. "I'll gallop ahead, I think,"
he said, raising his reins, "but I'll be obliged to you if you'll bring that mule along quietly and just put him in your stable till I can come round for him. So long." He gave the mare her head, and in a moment she was skimming like a swallow over the gentle undulations of the dusty stretch of the Indian lands. Backus jogged along, watching the mare and her rider grow smaller and smaller in the distance.
"You don't just know what you want yourself," said he, apostrophising his late companion, "but I think I know about what you want, and I'll make it my business, Mr. Stephens, to see that you don't get it." The look in his eye as he spoke was not amiable.
It was not exactly a cheerful sight that greeted the American on his arrival at San Remo. The palaver was in progress, and there against a blank wall outside the Sanchez house squatted eleven very glum-faced Navajos, while on the ground opposite to them in the strong morning light sat Don Nepomuceno and three of his relations who had come to give him their support.
The eleven Indians were the first Navajos Stephens had ever seen, and he eyed them with no little curiosity. "Call these wild Indians?" he felt like saying: "why they look as civilised as the Pueblos." This was because of their dress mainly. They did not have their hair braided in locks with beaver fur like the mountain Utes, or twisted up like any of the plains Indians; each had a bright red kerchief bound turban-wise round his snaky black locks, just like the Pueblo Indians, except that he wore no "chungo," or pigtail, at the back. Neither was their colour as dark as that of the Utes or the Sioux; they were distinctly lighter.
"Perhaps living further south they wash more," he thought, "and that may account for it." Then, in lieu of buffalo robes and buckskins they were clad in neat belted tunics and loose cotton breeches, and for a wrap or mantle had gaily striped blankets of their own weaving. "Real tony their blankets are," said he to himself, "and just as pretty as a painted mule." A _pinto_, or piebald, mule is an extraordinary rarity, and it is quoted in the Far West as the highest standard of picturesque beauty.
No; as far as dress went they did not look like wild Indians at all, at least not like any he had ever seen. But when he came to look at their faces he changed his mind. Not that they were all alike; on the contrary the diversity of types was remarkable. There were lowbrowed, thick-lipped, thick-nosed, heavy-jawed men among them, and there were others with fine aquiline features and regular, well-shaped mouths. But their bold, impudent, cunning eyes betrayed them. One and all they looked thorough rascals. As Stephens ran his eye over them, his acute glance rested on a big, hawk-faced man with a sullen expression, who sat in the middle of them smoking a cigarette with an air of unconcern. His broad leather belt was studded with great bosses of shining silver.
"How," said Stephens, dismounting and looking straight at this Indian whom he took for the chief, but the latter gazed at him stolidly without taking any notice. The Mexican rose and welcomed him warmly.
"Come round with me to the corral, Don Estevan," said Sanchez as he dismounted; "let me put the mare up for you. Pedro, the peon, is keeping the house door. My unlucky boy Andres is inside. Ah, what a foolish boy to go and gamble with an Indian! The storekeeper will have told you of our trouble."
"Yes," said Stephens, "he told me that the Navajos were demanding your whole flock of sheep."
"Oh, not really," replied the Mexican; "that is, they only threaten to take them if I don't pay. But they positively and actually have the impudence to demand that I should pay them a thousand dollars, silver dollars, for one scrub Indian," he groaned.
"It sounds a good lot," said Stephens reflectively.
"Oh, it's ridiculous," said the disconsolate Mexican. "A thousand dollars for one miserable, low-down Indian. I've offered them a hundred and twenty-five, and that's more than he was worth to them twice over.
But they say he belonged to Ankitona's family." He busied himself undoing the latigo strap of the hair cinch.
"But, look here," rejoined the American, to whom this exact appraisement of the value of one "low-down Indian" was a novelty; "according to the way Mr. Backus gave me the story as we rode down, I can't see why you should have to pay anything to them at all. If Don Andres killed the Indian in self-defence, any court in this country would clear him. Do they deny it? Do they say that he attacked the Indian first?"
"Oh, no," said the Mexican, "you don't understand; his acting in self-defence doesn't make any difference." He spread the saddle blanket over the mare, tying it on with a cord surcingle. "She's hot," he observed, "she'd best have it on till she's cool. No," he repeated, as they turned back to the scene of the palaver, "it isn't a matter where law courts count for anything. Our courts don't ever bind the Navajos.
The one thing that does count in our dealings with them is whether we are at peace or at war. Now, if we were at war with them at present they wouldn't come here to ask for pay. No, they'd go straight off and just kill or carry away captive any Mexicans they could catch in revenge.
But, you see, we're at peace; so the rule is, if any Mexican kills a Navajo he must pay. They think that if his family don't make the Mexicans pay up for the dead man his ghost will haunt them. Their religion, you see, binds them, if I don't pay, to kill my son, or else maybe me, or some other member of my family; and very likely they'll cut my sheep herd some night and run off a lot of the sheep besides. Oh, I've got to pay." He groaned again.
"Well, Don Nepomuceno," said the American, "I'm real sorry to hear of your ill-luck. I call it a very hard case. If there's anything I can do to help you, you can count on me. All the same, if that Indian came at Don Andres with a knife I don't myself see what else he could do except shoot, and I ain't the man to blame him for defending himself. Say, now, before we go back to where the Navajos are, you just tell me what you think I can do to be of assistance."
The strictly business footing, so to speak, on which Don Nepomuceno dealt with the subject puzzled the prospector not a little, and he was afraid lest by interfering ignorantly he might only make things worse.
"Well, Don Estevan, these Navajos think a deal of an American's opinion, naturally; so, since you are so kind, I want you to use your influence with them to make them take a more reasonable sum. A thousand dollars is all nonsense. He was quite a poor scrub Indian. He had hardly any sheep of his own, and no pony. They admit that he lived off the richer men of his family, so I say that they're well rid of him. They're really richer without him. He was, among them, like one of the poorest of our peons here. I declare if I gave them fifty dollars for him it would be plenty.
But he was one of the family of Ankitona, and he's a very powerful chief, with lots of relations. He's not here himself--not he. He has sent his sister's son though, Mahletonkwa. He's that tall Indian with a hooked nose and the big row of silver plates all round his belt. He's a terribly bad Indian. He boasts that he never surrendered to the Americans,--that they never could take him to the Pecos. I think he's rather afraid of them all the same, though he says he isn't, and swaggers about with his band of desperadoes. But he's quite the worst Navajo going, and there hasn't been a piece of mischief done in the last two years without him and his gang having a hand in it. They're the terror of the whole country. There's another rascal there that's pretty near as bad as he is. That's the one with two feathers in his head-dress--Notalinkwa his name is. He's a villain too."
"I see," answered Stephens; "you want me to talk to this--what do you call him--Mahletonkwa, and tell him that he's got to come down a bit in his price. Do you think that'll do any good?"
The Mexican turned his eager eyes full on Stephens, and laid his hand on his arm. "I think it will," he cried; "you are an American, and all the Navajos think that it's their cue to keep on good terms with the Americans. They are a good deal afraid of them since the time of their defeat in the Canon de Chelly, when they learned to fear the brave Coronel Christophero Carson and that _valiente capitan_, Albert Pfeiffer. That was several years ago, and after that they surrendered and were taken away beyond Santa Fe and kept over on the Pecos. They did hate that; they were nearly starved there, and lots of them died, and a good job too. It is only a couple of years now since they have been allowed to come back to their own country. But even those who never were caught and taken to the Pecos heard the story of it, and they, too, fear the Americans. Oh yes, they listen to their agent, Senor Morton, at Canon Bonito."
"Well, then," exclaimed Stephens, "there's our man. Of course the Indian agent is the proper person to appeal to in a matter of this sort. Shall I tell this Mahletonkwa, then, that the moment he goes to cutting up any didoes on his own hook round here the agent will be down on him like a knife? I'll just inquire what right Mr. Mahletonkwa has got to come here anyhow--yes, or to be off his reservation at all. If Don Andres had gone on to their reservation and killed a Navajo there, then there might be something to be said for their side of the argument, but if a Navajo comes here among the Mexican sheep herds he's got to abide by the laws of New Mexico, I say."
"Oh, Don Estevan, that's no use," answered the other sadly. "He don't care two _reales_ about the laws. No, you tell him that Senor Morton will make the soldiers come and shoot him if he or any of his family kill my son; make him believe that, if you can, and you'll be doing some good."
"I'll try," said the American doubtfully, "but I hardly expect he'll mind much what I say."
The pair walked round the house to the south side, where the Navajos were sitting, and squatted down on the dry, sandy soil opposite them, alongside of the three Mexicans. Stephens got out his tobacco-bag and passed it round before he filled his own pipe, and began to smoke with calculated deliberation. He had at least learned one lesson, that it is no use to hurry an Indian if you want to do business with him.
Having got his pipe thoroughly alight and returned his tobacco-bag to his pocket, he looked at Mahletonkwa, and said, "You come from Fort Defiance?"
The Agency at Fort Defiance, called by the Mexicans Canon Bonito, is just over the border line between New Mexico and Arizona, and well in the middle of the Navajo country.
"No," said the Indian briefly; "more this side."
"You got leave from the agent to be off the reservation?" asked Stephens sharply.
The Indian parried this question. "I come from my mother's brother, Ankitona," he said. "He mucho bravo--very angry about this thing." He indicated the killing by Don Andres.
"Likely enough," said Stephens, "but that's no answer to my question.
What I want to know is if you've got leave."
"I don't ask anybody's leave," said Mahletonkwa defiantly. "I'm not the slave of the Americans. I never went to Bosque Redondo." Bosque Redondo was the scene of their captivity over on the Pecos River.