He took one hand out of his pocket, stooped down, and felt her head. "It looks like she'd never run anywhere again," he said.
He did not really believe that she was killed, but he thought it politic to assume so. His position placed him absolutely at the mercy of the Indian; but his voice, his manner, and his action conveyed the assumption that it was absolutely impossible that the Indian should dream of attacking him.
His coolness succeeded. The cacique lowered his whip and stepped back, while Stephens moved the girl's arms gently from her head. They fell limp on the earthen floor.
Stephens had seen some wild doings in Californian mining towns, but he never had seen a woman beaten in his life. Those limp arms sent a queer thrill through him. A sudden fury rose within him, but he mastered it.
He felt her head all over slowly and carefully to see if the skull was fractured--as indeed it might well have been had she been struck with the loaded whip-handle. This gave him time to think of his next move.
"If you've killed her, you'll be hanged for it, Salvador," he said at last, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. "You and she are not citizens, but you'll be hanged all the same. The law of the Americans reaches here; understand that."
The Indian, whose passion was really more under control than seemed to be the case, was somewhat cowed at Stephens's deliberate statement, but he rejoined sullenly, "She's not dead. Lashes don't kill."
"You will have to answer for it if she dies," said Stephens getting up.
He had satisfied himself that the girl was not seriously injured.
"Not to you then," said the Indian, his courage reviving, when he realised that the threat was, after all, blank cartridge, seeing that the girl was alive. He tried to work himself into a rage again. "What do you break into my house for and interfere with me? I'll do what I like with my own." He stepped forward close to Stephens, between him and Josefa. "Go out, or I'll kill you!" he said, raising his voice to a tone of fury.
For a moment the American paused, uncertain. The Indian was a powerful man, full as big and strong as himself, well armed with knife, pistol, and loaded whip, to say nothing of his fifty friends outside the door.
The hesitation was momentary. "I can't leave this girl to that brute's mercy," he said to himself. "Perhaps I can back him down."
He looked Salvador square in the eyes. "Where's Felipe?" said he calmly.
"You must answer for him, too. Have you killed him?"
"None of your business," said the Indian roughly. "Be off!" and he raised his hand.
At this moment Josefa, hitherto as still as a corpse, turned her face from the floor, but without rising. She looked up at Stephens. "He gave him two shots," she said, in a voice wonderfully steady considering the pain she was enduring. "I saw him fall."
"Then I arrest you for the murder of Felipe. You are my prisoner. Give up your arms."
The only answer the cacique made to this demand was to take out his revolver, but instead of surrendering it he thrust the muzzle in Stephens's face, cocking it as he did so.
The steady gaze of the American met, without quailing, the black, flashing eyes of the Indian. Grey eyes against black, white man against red, the strife is as old as the history of the continent they stood upon; perhaps it will last as long.
"You can kill me, I know, of course," said the American, speaking very slowly and distinctly; "but you can't kill all the soldiers of the Government. You may kill me to-day, but to-morrow the soldiers will come from Santa Fe and take you prisoner; and if you make your people resist they will destroy you. The Navajos were twenty thousand, but the soldiers conquered them. You are only three hundred. They will conquer you and take you away as they did the Navajos, as they did the Jicarillas, as they have done the Modocs." He raised his left hand very gently and took hold of the pistol barrel. "Don't destroy your people, Salvador," he continued. "You know I wish them well. Loose it."
The Indian's grasp relaxed; he drew a deep breath and stepped back.
Stephens lowered the pistol to his own right hand, muzzle upwards, uncocked it, and placed it in his waist-belt.
"Now come with me to my room," said he, taking him gently but firmly by the arm. The struggle for the mastery was over; the Indian had yielded; he obeyed unresistingly. As they stepped out of the house, Stephens said to Tito, "Tell the women to see to the girl."
Outside they found Tostado and the other chiefs approaching--not too fast. It was very plain that they did not want to interfere in the matter. Stephens took his man towards them.
"Look here, Tostado," said he as soon as they met, "I have arrested Salvador for shooting Felipe. I am going to take him to Santa Fe, to the agent and to the governor. Now I want some of you to go along and see that it is all right and square."
Stephens had been reflecting during the course of the night on the events of the previous day, and it had occurred to him that accidents did sometimes happen, and that his letters to the governor and the general might possibly go astray. He had no special reason to suspect what Mr. Backus had actually done, but he had a general feeling of uneasiness with regard to the San Remo post-office. The idea had been already in his mind to go to Santa Fe and lay the affair of the Navajos before the authorities in person, and now this difficult matter of the arrest of the cacique was a double reason for doing it.
The Indians began to converse among themselves.
"Come along to my room, then, and talk it over," said Stephens, and he went ahead with his prisoner, reluctantly followed by the chiefs.
CHAPTER XVI
THE FEE IS ACCEPTED
The whole party came into Stephens's room and settled themselves round the wall on the floor, much as they had done the night before. Stephens seated his prisoner on a stool in the middle, and taking the cacique's revolver from his belt laid it on the table. As he did so, he drew the attention of Tostado, who was next to him, to the two recently discharged chambers in the cylinder. "Those were the shots," said he.
"Maybe so, Don Estevan," answered the Indian suavely. "Doubtless you are right in what you say, as you always are. We know that your honour is very wise and very just. But before we do anything about it we want to know what Salvador has to say; we have not heard him yet."
"I do not want to conceal anything," said the cacique abruptly. "I saw them from the top of the hill that leads down from the mesas to La Boca.
I went straight to the river to them. He was on foot driving my horse, trying to drive him into the river. I fired at him once, twice. He ran away and stopped. I took my horse and my daughter, and I brought them home. He ran after us, but he fell down. I saw him lying there the last thing from the hill. If he is dead, he is dead. I do not know any more."
His story was so straightforward and simple that it was convincing.
"Where did you say all this happened?" asked Stephens.
"On the river, down below La Boca a league," answered the Indian.
The chiefs began to question him about the details of the affair. He described to them the position of the fugitives when he overtook them, and the refusal of the terrified horse to enter the swollen river.
"Then Felipe was not riding your horse," observed Stephens, who was listening, for in deference to him they spoke in Spanish for the time being.
"No, he was on foot. He was driving the horse," was the reply of the cacique.
"I suppose your daughter was on the horse?" said Stephens.
"Yes, he was taking them both along," answered the Indian.
"How old is she?" asked the prospector. "She looks almost a woman grown."
The Indian reflected a little while. "She was a little child so high,"
he answered at last, "when there was the great war in the States," and he held his hand at a height to indicate a child of ten years old.
"She must be eighteen now, then," said Stephens.
"I suppose so. Yes, if you say so," admitted the Indian.
"Then she is not a child," said Stephens, "and she can marry him or anyone she likes. You have no right to prevent her. Understand that.
This is a free country. By the law a woman is as free as a man; she may go where she likes and marry whom she likes. She is not a slave, and don't you think any such thing. No American can strike a woman; that is the deepest of shames."
He paused after this, for him, unusually long speech, which was intended quite as much for the benefit of the other Indians as the cacique. The American felt a little elated at the thought that single-handed he had been able to arrest their cacique in their midst, and he could not resist improving the occasion.
There was a minute's silence, and then Tostado fixed his keen black eyes on the American's face. "Listen to me, Senor Don Estevan," he said. "The Americans have their way; that is good for them. The Mexicans have their way; that is good for them. And the wild Indians,--the Utes, and the Comanches, and the Navajos too,--they have their own ways. And we, we have our laws. We don't change them. I know if one Indian kills another, then the law of the Americans is to judge him; but the rest of the things we manage among ourselves. The Government gives us that right. We have our own alcalde. We have our own customs. And when men and women do wrong together we beat them. Then they are afraid. That is why our women are so good. Not like the Mexicans. That is good for us. We do not want to change."
"But," cried Stephens, "if it is your custom to beat the women like dogs, you ought to change it. Everybody knows that that it is shameful."