"Indeed!" retorted Stephens; "but, if you hear me talk, it might have been better for you if you had. You might have had a chance to learn how to behave yourself." If this audacious redskin was going to put on any frills with him he proposed to check him up short right at the start.
Mahletonkwa chose to look very surly at this rebuff. Then he repeated his previous assertion. "Ankitona very angry indeed about this."
"And quite right of him too," said Stephens. "He ought to be very angry with your man who went and got himself killed. You've got no right to say it's Don Andres's fault, if he had to defend himself. The man who drew the knife is to blame."
The Indian dissented by a gesture, but made no verbal reply.
Disregarding Sanchez's warning of the futility of this argument, Stephens laboured to prove that killing done in self-defence was nothing more than justifiable homicide. But his words seemed to take no effect on the Indian, who smoked on stolidly till it was evident that all this talk was to no purpose. In an undertone Don Nepomuceno hinted as much.
When at last the Navajo condescended to answer, his view of the affair proved to be very much as the Mexican had prophesied. To him it did not matter three straws, he explained, who struck the first blow or who was to blame for the quarrel. His point was that the family had lost a valuable asset in the shape of a warrior, for which they required a good round sum in compensation, and not only that, but enough to enable them to give their lost relative a number of gifts that would make him comfortable in the next world. He would require a good deal to make him comfortable, too, for not only had he been killed, but he had been sadly disfigured; an undeniable fact, for of course the charred object that had been partly destroyed with fire was a horrid sight. The dead warrior's spirit was exceedingly angry, said Mahletonkwa, and required to be appeased with liberal offerings, and if he wasn't properly mollified he would take it out of his neglectful family by haunting them. Under this spiritual compulsion it was clear that all the family were bound to rise to the situation, he argued. There was no choice left them; they were absolutely bound, by some means or other, to extract satisfaction from the family of the slayer. He was very much in earnest.
It wasn't war by any means; no, it was a mere family affair, so to speak. But there it was, and it would have to be arranged.
It took Stephens some time to become convinced that Don Nepomuceno was right, and that the dead man's ghost was at the bottom of it all.
"You see, this is how it is, Don Estevan," said the Mexican, speaking to him aside. "These Navajos have a sort of Purgatory of their own. Heaven forgive me for comparing their heathen superstitions to our holy religion, but I want to make you understand. You know when our friends die we give the proper offerings to the priest to say masses to make their stay in Purgatory shorter. Well, now you have heard Mahletonkwa say that these Indians have their religion, which is all false, of course, only they are obstinate and believe it, and according to that it is necessary for the family to give presents to make the spirits of the dead more happy. And they are very much afraid if they don't do it; oh yes, they are grossly superstitious; but how can I help it? How can I teach them better? These heathens are very expensive to deal with. If he were a Christian it wouldn't cost me half so much, but I don't suppose you could make him see how foolish he is."
He paused, as if a new idea had struck him. "Could you, do you think"--he added eagerly--"could you show him the error of his ways?"
"Jerusalem, no!" cried Stephens, taken considerably aback, "I rather guess not. I'm not a missionary by a long shot. No sir-ee, that's a trade I never had a go at, but I'll tell you what we used to say up in Montana: 'The best missionary is a gain-twist, hair-trigger rifle that will convert a Sioux Indian at three hundred yards every pop.' That's what we said there; but I'll admit that these southern Indians down here are a very different sort of folk. The Sioux were pure, unadulterated savages, but these Navajos seem to be part human. Still, I don't see my way to wading in at Messrs. Mahletonkwa and Co. with a hymn-book." He chuckled to himself at the navete of the Mexican's suggestion.
"Yes," said the latter regretfully, "I feared you couldn't do it. After all, to be missionaries is the business of the padres and not of you or me. But I like what you told me about the missionary rifle of the Americans that converts an Indian at three hundred yards. You tell him that; preach that to him; put it strong." He evidently had great faith in the moral influence of the American over the Navajos from the mere fact of his being an American.
"Very well," replied Stephens, with a certain pride of race in the appeal thus made, "I'll see what I can do. Look here, Mahletonkwa," he continued, addressing the chief, "I've heard your talk about this unfortunate incident, and I quite see that you've got reason on your side, looking at it from your point of view. Of course, our point of view is quite different; but we'll waive that for the moment. Very well.
Here's Don Nepomuceno making you a very liberal offer of a hundred and twenty-five dollars to settle the matter. Now that's a lot of money; and if you're the wise man I take you for, you'll close with it and accept his offer. That's my advice to you. You'll find it best in the end, much better business than trying to fight the United States soldiers. The soldiers have got repeating rifles, heap-shoot guns, mind you. If you refuse, and go and take the law into your own hands, and attack Don Andres, or any of his family, you'll smart for it. I give you fair warning. If you touch them I'll have the soldiers sent after you.
Captain Pfeiffer aint dead yet. You've heard of him, so don't you make any mistake about that. You hear me talk; and what I say I'll do. My tongue is straight. I have spoken."
His words carried weight and produced some effect, as two of the Navajos at once began to urge something on their chief with great earnestness in their own language, apparently wishing him to comply. Stephens had adopted the crisp, pungent sentences that appeal most to the redskin's taste. But Mahletonkwa was in no hurry to come to terms, and presently replied to Stephens at some length, explaining that the offer was most inadequate. More cash for themselves and gifts for the dead man were indispensable, absolutely indispensable. His terms were still a thousand dollars, neither more nor less.
"I believe that other chap--what d'you call him? Notalinkwa, looks as if he was inclined to vote for taking your offer," said Stephens to Don Nepomuceno. He had been observing the faces of the rest of the Indians very closely while Mahletonkwa was speaking. "Look here. Let's leave him and his friends to argue it out; I'm sure by their looks some of them want him to give way. They'll talk better if we're not by. Come along to the store or somewhere."
"Come into the house," said the Mexican, jumping up; "we can talk better too when we are by ourselves," and he led the way to the great door leading into the patio, now strongly barred and fastened. At the master's summons the peon who was on guard hastened to unbar; the door was partly opened and they slipped in, the master of the house quickly assisting the peon to replace the wooden beams that secured it as soon as they were inside, while Stephens shook hands with Don Andres, a tall, well-built young Mexican, who would have been very handsome had he not been marked with smallpox.
"How do you do, Don Andres?" he said heartily. "I'm sorry for this trouble you've got into. However, let's hope it can be fixed up all right."
"It's very unlucky," returned the young Mexican; "I didn't want to kill him, but he would have it. I had to do something to defend my life."
"That's just what I say," assented Stephens; "I was putting it to Mahletonkwa like that just now, only he wouldn't see it. He jumped the track entirely, and went off into a rigmarole about ghosts and such like stuff, where I couldn't follow him, nohow."
"You were an exasperating, foolish boy!" exclaimed Don Nepomuceno testily to his son, as the door-beam was finally wedged into its place.
"It's all your fault," he broke out, with vexation and almost despair in his voice. "What I shall do I don't know. You've gone and acted like an idiot. I've told you to stop your gambling a thousand times, and then you must go and gamble with an Indian, a scrub Indian! Yes, an idiot, that's what you are. Come in, Don Estevan, come into the house," and he led the way to the big living-room, Don Andres following rather sheepishly. Not a word did he venture to say in reply to his angry father's tirade. "Honour thy father" is a commandment that is far from being obsolete in New Mexico. If his father had taken a rod in his wrath and beaten him, this tall young man would have dutifully submitted himself.
"Sit down," said the master of the house hospitably, pointing to the divan; "take a seat here, Don Estevan. Will you have something to eat?"
"Well, thank you, Don Nepomuceno," answered Stephens, "since you are so kind, I think I will, if it isn't too much trouble. The fact is, I came down without my breakfast."
"Ho, there, Juana!" cried the Mexican, running to the door, "and you, my sister! Make haste, set breakfast for the senor. He is hungry. Be quick now." A scurrying of feet was heard in the kitchen at the sound of his commanding voice. "And make him tortillas of wheat flour," his loud tones went on, "hot tortillas with fat, and coffee; see that you make coffee."
He came back and seated himself beside Stephens. "What do you think about it, senor?" he inquired. "What is the best thing to be done?"
"Well, if you ask me my deliberate opinion," said Stephens, leaning back and crossing his left leg over the other with his hands clasped round the knee, "I should say this: It seems to be perfectly clear that these Indians are outside the law; it's no use to appeal to it with them. Now the mail goes by here to-day, noon, towards Santa Fe. I say, write to the governor of the Territory at Santa Fe, and to the general commanding the United States troops there, and tell them about it, and ask their protection. They're bound to give it you. And write to the Navajo Agency at Fort Defiance, and tell the agent there, and ask him to have Mahletonkwa and his band brought back on to the reservation. And I should tell the Indians exactly what I was doing, and warn them once more that they'll certainly have the United States cavalry after them if they don't behave. If that makes them any more inclined to accept your offer of a hundred and twenty-five dollars, why, of course you'll count them out the money and settle it out of hand. I should call a settlement cheap at a hundred and twenty-five dollars cash down. More than that, if I was you, I'd raise my offer a trifle, if I thought I could afford it, so as to meet them. You heard Mahletonkwa say he wanted gifts, some sheep and a pony, to sacrifice for the dead man's ghost. I gather by what you tell me about their religion, that he thinks that if he kills them for him specially, the dear departed can go and corral the ghosts of the pony and sheep in the happy hunting-grounds, and have the full benefit of them there. Now, you must have in your flock some old six-tooth ewes, that likely will never breed another lamb; give him a dozen or two to butcher. And then, couldn't you trade for, or borrow, some old stove-up pony, very cheap, and let him have that, too? That won't ruin you. I take it the Navajos mean to keep your good hard silver dollars for themselves, and they'll religiously send the foundered old sheep and pony ghosts to keep their defunct relative company in the sweet by-and-by." The notion of this ghostly herd tickled his cynical humour mightily.
"Yes, perhaps I might do that," said Sanchez in a saddened voice. To part with any of his cherished flock is like drawing eye-teeth for a Mexican. "I might let them have a few of my oldest ewes; they come in very useful for mutton, but if I must, I must. And my brother-in-law has a handsome pony who is _inyerbado_; he ate poison-weed over on the Rio Grande a year ago, and has never been any use since. That dead Navajo was a very poor scrub, and it would be more than good enough for him; he ought to be uncommonly grateful for it."
He spoke so feelingly that it really seemed as if he almost half believed in the Purgatory of the Navajos himself. He hesitated and then went on. "But as for the letters, Don Estevan, it's not so easy. For one thing, the governor and the general don't know Spanish; and then, you know, I haven't much English, and I'm not much of a hand at letter-writing anyhow. I couldn't manage the letters."
"Oh, if that's all," returned the other, "I'll write the letters for you willingly enough. Indeed, as I'm an American, it's just possible they may be a trifle more ready to pay attention to them. Yes, and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll write out an account of the killing of the Navajo for Don Andres, like an affidavit, and he shall sign it, and then we'll have Mr. Backus witness it and put on the post-office stamp. He's a sort of a United States official, and it may help to make them feel more called upon to take notice of it. That'll come as near to being a regular legal document as anything we can scare up out here. I do like to do everything in correct legal style, when I can. I'm all for law and order every time. That's me."
"Ah, Don Estevan," said the elder Mexican, "it is you that have the clear head. I am very much obliged to you. Your plan is the good one."
"Very well, then," answered Stephens, "I'll just run over to the post-office, and get some paper and envelopes and stamps, and draw up those letters; and as Don Andres had better not go outside the house before the matter is settled, I'll ask Mr. Backus to step around here in the course of an hour, and bring his post-office stamp with him."
He rose from his seat to go towards the door, but Don Nepomuceno hospitably protested. "Wait till you have had your breakfast first, Don Estevan. It is all ready; here is Manuelita bringing it for you;" and as he spoke the girl entered and set the table for him, as Juana had done on the previous day. She smiled at his greeting, but her eyelids were swollen with crying.
At this moment there came a knocking at the outer door, and the master of the house hastened out to see who it was demanding admittance, and was followed by his son.
"He's all right," said Stephens cheerfully to the girl, as he looked into her anxious eyes. "He's safe enough as long as he stays inside here. They'll none bother him while he's protected by these walls. And I've good hopes that we may be able to bring them to a reasonable settlement, so that he can go about again in perfect safety. Don't you fret yourself over it. We'll make these Navajos sing a proper tune before we've done with them." He spoke with the easy confidence of a man accustomed to deal with serious affairs, and conscious of possessing the ability and the experience for handling them successfully. But he was equally astonished and embarrassed when Manuelita, instead of appearing calmed by his reassuring words, flung her hands over her face and burst into a passion of sobs.
CHAPTER XIII
A GIRL'S TEARS
At the girl's outburst Stephens was completely taken aback. Tears, a woman's tears, were a novelty to him, and he felt the quick leap of his heart in response. But it was ten years since he had heard a woman sob, and his practical sympathy, or at least the power of expressing it, had become blunted. He did not know what to say; half a dozen phrases struggled to be born in his throat; he wanted to explain at once to the pretty creature that it was all right; to tell her that there was nothing to cry about; to say there was no use in getting into a fuss over it; that after all a man had to take his chances; and that anyhow the milk wasn't spilt yet; that it would be time enough to begin to cry when something really happened. But he felt the brutal stupidity of such remarks, and they remained unspoken, while there arose in him at the same instant the urgent desire to do something; to take her by the hand like a frightened child; to smooth her ruffled hair and staunch her tears; to console her, and, by some means or other, stay the sobs that shook the slender body. But he had no right to do any such thing, and he hesitated to intrude himself on her grief, which, moreover, appeared to him, like a child's, a trifle exaggerated. To him who had lived so many years on the frontier, a violent death had come to seem almost the natural end. Few pioneers expected to die in their beds. Along the trails and around the mining-camps were many mounds, each one of which marked a six-by-two claim that was the last that the holder would ever occupy, one that he needed no ever-ready Winchester to defend. Nameless graves they were for the most part, or if there slanted at the head some rude board with a name and date roughly scribbled to say who lay beneath, the brief legend that gave all that would ever be known of how he came there repeated with monotonous regularity the tale of misadventure or of wrong. "Shot, stabbed, stripped and mangled by Thugs," "Killed by Indians," "Murdered by road-agents," "Lynched by Vigilantes," "Blown up by dynamite", "Crushed by a fall of rock," "Died of starvation," "Died of thirst," "Died of cold,"--these and such as they were the forms of death with which his Odyssey of toils had made him familiar. Small wonder, then, if he who had lived so long face to face with the possibility of such an end, taking the chances of it freely himself, and seeing them taken as freely by others, now felt as if the young man Don Andres was a trifle overpitied. He was sorry for him himself, he was trying to help him all he knew, and he was ready to turn out and fight for him at any minute, but he could not see why anybody should want to cry about it. And yet here was this startlingly agitating, insistent noise of a girl sobbing beside him that gripped his heart with an emotion he hardly knew the meaning of.
"Don't you fret yourself," he repeated; "we'll see him through, senorita, never fear."
Instinctively he had risen to his feet and was standing by her; and presently she recovered herself and began to speak, though brokenly at first.
"It is very foolish of me, I know, but I cannot help it. It makes me think how my two uncles were killed by the Indians eight years ago up in the mountain. My grandfather found them both lying dead in the trail; the cruel Navajos had shot them both with arrows from an ambush. My poor grandfather was alone, so he could not carry them down; he had to leave them there, while he came back to San Gabriel for help. He cried so much that he grew blind and could hardly find his way to San Gabriel. And then their bodies were brought down here; I was only a child like Altagracia, but I remember it so well, and indeed this was a house of mourning; and now if they kill my brother too, I don't know what I shall do."
Again Stephens felt the odd sense of surprise at the strength of her feelings. Don Andres was a fine young fellow enough in his way, but why all this display of emotion because he was now to run rather more risk than usual? Dimly he became conscious that her trouble was due to family affection, and that he himself had forgotten what it was like. His mind fled back to his boyhood, when he and a brother and sister, from whom he had now been long parted, used to play together; memories of that early fondness came back with a curious vividness. A hard crust had formed over the gentler side of his nature during the years of isolation and severance from those natural ties; it seemed ready now to dissolve in a moment at a few tears shed by a girl for a brother's peril. Habituated as he was to hold himself firmly in hand, he was half angry with himself for minding anything so much as he minded her sobs.
"Why, how fond you must be of him!" he remarked crudely; and without his intending it, his secret surprise showed itself in his tone.
"But he is my brother," she returned, and her wet eyes met his half indignantly; "don't you understand that I must care for him very much indeed?"
"Surely yes," he rejoined. "Of course I understand that"; but in his heart came a denial that he did really understand it, or had any right to understand it. "If I had been clubbed to death for witchcraft in the ditch yesterday by those Santiago idiots," he thought, "not one human soul would have cared like this about me." Yes; it was quite true. There was no one now who cared for him in this way, with this warmth of feeling, and there was no one for whom he cared or could care. Thence came a new sense of something lacking in his life; even supposing that all his hopes deferred were to be realised at last, supposing that to-morrow, for instance, he became master of a mine worth a million, who would rejoice? No one, unless it were Rocky, his old pard, who really wasn't a bad-hearted sort of fellow, though he could play the fool at times to such exasperating effect. But now he felt a sudden vacancy in his heart; the need of a comradeship that should be entire, absolute, and inalienable.
"And have you no family, Don Estevan?" she asked; "no brother or sister?"
"Yes," he answered, "I have both, but I haven't seen them in ten years.
They are married and settled down away back there in the States; they must have half forgotten me by this time; I was no more than a boy when I started for the West, and I've never been back." And at the recollection his lips parted, and his breast heaved gently. An involuntary sigh escaped him before he knew what it was. The sighing mood had not been much in his line. Manuelita looked at him with a question in her eyes.
"But you love them still?" she said.
"Well, yes," he replied, "I suppose I do, if it comes to that. But it is a long time since I saw them, and much water has run under the bridges between then and now."