No sooner had they reached the outskirts of the village than they saw a man on foot, whose dress proclaimed him to be a white man, approaching from the San Remo direction, not by the road, but by a path that led through the plough-lands. They turned aside to meet him, and as he drew nearer it proved to be no other that Mr. Backus himself.
"You'd better go ahead," said Stephens to his three Indian companions as he reined up his mare in order to speak to him. "I'll catch you up in a few minutes, but I just want to hear if he knows anything"; and they rode forward accordingly.
"This is a devil of a business," he began abruptly, addressing the storekeeper, "and I should like to hear what you've got to say about it." His lips closed tightly, and there was a dangerous light shining in his eyes.
"Ah, about the carrying off of the Sanchez girl," said Backus, with a nervous affectation of taking it all rather lightly; "well, yes, it is a devil of a business, as you say; it's the impidentest thing as ever I heard of. Who ever saw the like of it?"
"It's a serious matter, I'd have you to know," returned the prospector with rapidly rising anger; "it's a dreadful thing for a woman to be carried off by these infernal scoundrels, and for you of all men to speak lightly of it is nothing less than an outrage. You mark my words."
He was exceedingly indignant with this man for his previous conduct, and that he should assume a flippant tone now was unbearable.
"Wal', I'm sorry, real sorry about it, of course," said Backus; "and it's spoilt our little game we had on for getting that information out of them Navajos, for the present anyway."
"I'll trouble you not to talk about 'our' little game," retorted the other hotly. "I cautioned you against mixing yourself up with those scoundrelly Navajos, and don't you go to imply that I'm involved with you in any way; I could never look Don Nepomuceno in the face again if I shared your responsibility for encouraging the villains."
"Seems to me," sneered Backus, "that for a man as puts on so much style, and takes up such tonified notions as you, talking about 'never going outside your own colour' and the like, you make pretty considerable of a fuss about a Mexican ranchero and the trouble he's got himself into."
"I call him a whiter man than you, for one thing," exclaimed Stephens; "and for another, mark me, I hold you personally responsible for this outrage. It's a more serious matter for you than you seem to be aware of. You've made yourself liable by the way you behaved yesterday with those redskins, giving them that whiskey and letting them shoot all about your place."
"Why, you was shooting with 'em yourself for one thing," retorted the Texan with intentional insolence in his tone; "and, for another, you mark me, I didn't _give_ 'em no whiskey." He was deliberately mocking Stephens; but the latter was in no mood to put up with it, and flinging his right leg over the mare's neck he jumped to the ground facing the quarter-blood Cherokee. He threw the mare's rein to Faro to hold; it was a trick he had taught him, and the dog stood there obediently with it in his jaws.
"I say you _sold_ them the whiskey, then, if you didn't _give_ it," he exclaimed, full of scorn for the mean evasion of the storekeeper. "They were excited with liquor when I came down there yesterday. I smelt it on them right there at your house. Don't you dare open your lips to deny it."
"It's no such a d----d thing!" cried the storekeeper with an ugly look, confident that no one had seen him hand over the two bottles to Mahletonkwa; the next instant he felt Stephens's clenched fist strike him full on his lying mouth, and he went staggering backward.
Recovering himself, with a look of fury he threw back his right hand to his hip for a pistol; it was in vain; he had come without one; he cast a meaning look at the revolver belted round the prospector's waist.
"You're a d----d brave man, aren't you?" he sneered, "when you know you're heeled and I aint."
For answer Stephens instantly unbuckled his belt and hung the pistol over the horn of his saddle. "There, then," he said, and he advanced with his hands up towards the Texan, "if you want a fist fight you can get it right here."
"Yes," said the other, "and then have your infernal dog lay hold of me,"
and he backed away from Stephens. In height and weight Backus knew himself to be a match for the prospector, but there was a grim determination about the latter which cowed him. "I'll pay you out for this," he said with oaths, still retreating before Stephens, "but I'll choose my own time for it."
Right behind him ran the acequia, brimming full, as it had been ever since the blasting, but Backus, stepping backwards with his eyes fixed on his enemy, forgot that it was there; he put one foot over the edge of the bank, lost his balance, and fell with his whole length in the water.
He emerged, streaming, on the opposite bank, and rescued his hat which had fallen off and was floating away. Then rising, he shook his fist and poured out more curses upon Stephens, who, thinking him sufficiently punished, did not choose to follow him farther. He waited a minute in silence till he saw Backus walk off towards the pueblo, then turning his back on his late adversary he remounted and quickly loped on to overtake his companions.
The prospector's brain was in a whirl as he rode through the fresh morning air and thought over the exciting events that had crowded one upon another since sunrise: the beating of Josefa, the arrest of the cacique, the news of the abduction of Manuelita, and lastly his collision with Backus. The first was already past history, and he had satisfied himself that though the Indian girl must have suffered a good deal she would undoubtedly recover and be all right again; what began to bother him a little now was the somewhat equivocal position in which he had placed himself with regard to her by taking her under his protection and establishing her next door to him in the pueblo under the care of Reyna.
"Well," he thought, "folks may say what they like about it. I didn't see any other way on the spur of the moment to make her safe; and now, looking back, I don't see that I could have done anything different. If folks want to talk they must just talk, and that's all there is in it. I guess I can stand the racket. If Tito brings Felipe back alive they shall get married right away, but if the cacique's bullet has laid the poor chap out, then I shall see what I can do to fix her up good somehow when I get back."
It was perhaps characteristic of him that now, when he was embarked on an expedition full of unknown perils, he said to himself easily "when I get back," without considering for a moment that ere that time came his bones might be bleaching white in some remote gulch, like those of the lone prospector whose tragic end had afforded so much amusement to Mahletonkwa and his band.
As for the arrest of the cacique, that, too, was past history, seeing that it was made for an offence that he had now settled to condone. He did not repent of his own action in the matter, either of the arrest or the condonation, but he could not help feeling a certain surprise as he thought of the ease with which the arrest had been effected. The angry chieftain had certainly proved astonishingly meek. As a fact, Stephens mixed so little with men that he was unconscious himself of the power there was in him to dominate others when possessed by strong indignation, and roused to defend the weak from wrong, as he had been that morning. Ordinarily quiet and self-contained in manner, speaking in a gentle voice, and showing an expression of mildness in the blue eyes that had gained him the name of Sooshiuamo, he was capable at times of being transformed by an energy that seemed something outside his common self, and by the contrast made him appear to be the very embodiment of superior and irresistible force.
It was perhaps as well for Backus that Stephens did not know that the storekeeper's greed of gain was at the bottom of the trouble; since he had deliberately whetted the Navajos' craving for whiskey and then doubled the price of it to them. It was their desire to compel Sanchez to pay them off instanter, and enable them to procure more liquor at any price, that had moved them to the extreme step of seizing his daughter.
But Stephens could not know this. All he knew was that she was gone, and that his one burning desire now was to rescue her from this most miserable fate that had overtaken her. Of what that fate was likely to be, there was in his own mind at this moment no manner of doubt whatever. Sioux and Shoshones, Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Kiowas and Comanches, the wild Indians, one and all, dealt out the same horrible fate to those who were unhappy enough to fall alive into their hands.
The men were tied to the stake, or spread-eagled on the ground, and roasted by a slow fire, the fiends, who danced round with hideous yells, cutting slices from the living flesh of their victim and eating them before his eyes. No refinement of torture was spared until death mercifully released him from his agonies. The fate of a woman was worse.
If she escaped being scalped and mangled on the spot, because her captors preferred to carry her away with them, she became the common property of the band, and the helpless victim of brutal outrage.
Stephens had seen one sad-eyed, heart-broken captive who had been rescued from the clutches of the Sioux, and the memory of her woful tale seemed to ring in his ears now as he rode. And he had been in Denver when the dead body of a white woman, on which the Cheyenne Dog-Soldiers had worked their will, was brought in from the burnt ranch where they found her. The mangled body was placed in a room before burial, and the men of the city were taken in, a few at a time, to view the ghastly mutilation, and learn what an Indian war meant for their wives and daughters. Denver was young then, and three-fourths of its people were men of fighting age. Stephens could never forget the faces of those men as they returned from that room where the poor remains lay. Some came out sick and faint; some with faces deadly pale and burning eyes and tight-shut lips; and some blaspheming aloud and hurling curses on the monsters whose pleasure and delight it was to work such abhorred wrong on poor human flesh.
How vividly it all came back to him as he pressed rapidly forward after his companions; his heart grew hot within him while he pictured to himself the girl whose charming face he knew so well, and whom he had come to regard with such a friendly liking, now in the grasp of ruthless hands. Well, he would rescue, if indeed any rescue were possible, or perish in the attempt.
"More he could not; less he would not; Forwards, till the work be done."
The hoof-strokes of the mare seemed to beat time to the verse.
He overtook the cacique and the two younger men just where the trail they were following left the valley and entered the mountains. It was rougher going here, and Alejandro jumped off and ran behind to ease the mule as they pushed in single file up the rocky path. After journeying thus for some time they came to a beautiful little grassy park of a few acres, ringed around with dark pines, and with a small stream running through it. The Indians dismounted; the prospector sat in his saddle and looked at them. Were they in earnest in this expedition, or were they only trifling with him? They had hardly been going three hours, and here they were calling a halt already.
"Dismount for a short instant, Sooshiuamo," said the cacique. "We will give the beasts water here, and let them eat a few mouthfuls of grass.
It is better so."
Stephens was not aware that it was the custom of the Indians to halt every couple of hours or so on a journey; they believe that the few minutes' rest given thus to their horses enables them to last out better, while American frontiersmen commonly make longer stages and longer halts. But as he had deliberately put himself under the guidance of these men, he thought it better to adopt their methods. He slacked his cinch, and, pulling off the bridle, allowed the mare to graze.
The Indians rolled cigarettes and smoked.
"Beautiful place, Sooshiuamo," said the cacique, who was standing up and looking around admiringly on the little valley. "How good the mountain grass is. I love this valley."
"Yes, it's just what you say, Cacique," answered Stephens; he knew the Indians loved this country which they now, as always, regarded as their own. He often wondered how much they felt the beauty of it in their souls, or whether with them it was a sort of physical instinct, like the yearning horses and cattle feel for their native pastures.
"I love this valley," repeated the cacique; "just down there is where, with one companion, I killed seven Navajos." He pointed with the hand that held the cigarette to the lower end of the park.
"You killed seven Navajos!" said Stephens, looking at him with surprise.
"When was that? How did you manage it?"
"It was in the time of the war," answered the other proudly. "The Navajos used to hide here in the mountains all the time, and fall upon our people when we were at work in our lands. We could not stir outside the pueblo then without arms for fear of being waylaid by the rascals.
And our scouts used to come up here in the mountains, too, and watch along the trails to see if any of the Navajos were prowling about, and give the alarm. Once I came up here on scout with another man of Santiago; and we hid and lay all night in that hill," he pointed to a rocky summit shaggy with pines that rose hard by. "And we struck the tracks of seven Navajos who were prowling about here to wait for their chance to make a descent upon our people in their fields. And for days we lay up there and watched them, and they never knew it, for we kept very still. And the third day we saw them making a sweat-house, and we knew they were going to have a bath. They built their house down there in the brush by the creek, and they covered it with willow twigs and sods to keep in the steam, and they made a fire and heated the stones red-hot, and carried them into the house and poured on water. And six of them left their arms outside with their clothes, and went into the bath, and the seventh covered the door with a blanket to keep in the hot steam. And my comrade and I crawled up on them through the brush very quickly, and making no noise, while the seventh Indian held the blanket over the door. And there I shot him with my gun,"--he threw up his rifle to his shoulder, and took aim at an imaginary Navajo as he spoke, his face glowing with pride and excitement over the recollection,--"and there he fell down dead. And we leaped forward, for we had stolen up very close behind his back, and the six Navajos inside came scrambling out of the sweat-house one after another, and we cracked their skulls, so, with our tomahawks, crack, crack, crack,"--he made an expressive pantomime of dealing heavy blows on a stooping foe,--"and we killed them all, every one. There was no chance for them; they could not escape. And we took their scalps and the plunder, and brought them home. It was a great triumph. Yes, I do love this valley."
"I don't doubt it," said the American; "you must have been very much pleased with yourselves. You scored there."
"Oh, we always scored against the Navajos," returned the other, "whenever we had fair play. The only way they ever could best us was by sneaking round like wolves and catching some of our men at work and off their guard; but fighting man to man we were far the better warriors. We always beat them then, as I did right here. Yes, I love this place. But come, Sooshiuamo, it is time for us to be moving again."
Forwards, forwards ever, through the shadow of the pine woods, over the silent carpet of brown fir-needles, where the sudden squirrel chattered and barked his alarm ere he rushed to the safety of his tree-top, over open grassy meadows and along willow-fringed streams where the mountain trout leaped and darted in the eddies. It was indeed a lovely land, rich in timber, rich in pasture, rich, too, as Stephens knew, in gold and silver, perhaps even in diamonds--who could tell? What tragedies, though, of torturer and tortured it had seen in the past,--ay, and was likely to see again; nay, what hideous things might not that unhappy girl be enduring now somewhere in its wild recesses! That thought never left Stephens for a single moment. The high, park-like country up here was much more open now that the trail had left the rugged defiles that led up into it. He urged his mare forward alongside the cacique's horse.
"When we catch up with the Navajos, Cacique," said Stephens, "what is your plan?"
"Ah," answered the cacique, "we must try the best way we can. If we can catch them off their guard we will fight them perhaps, and give it them hot. But if they are in a strong place like the Lava Beds ahead of us where we cannot get at them, we must try and make terms with them. But it will not be easy to catch them at a disadvantage and fight them; so very likely Don Nepomuceno will be glad to make terms. If he pays them well and gets his daughter back, it will be the best thing we can do."
There was a certain businesslike air of familiarity with the whole matter apparent in the cacique that struck Stephens. Evidently the carrying off of Manuelita belonged to a class of incidents that were by no means unusual according to his experience. As the prospector rode along pondering this fact, he reflected that Salvador was a man now about forty years of age, and that for thirty-five out of those forty years his people and the Navajos had been deadly enemies. It was only the recent conquest of the latter by the Americans that had put them on the novel footing of peace. Mutual slaughter and the carrying off of women had been the normal condition of things during the greater part of his life.
"I gather from what you say about ransom," said the American after a short silence, "that you think the Navajoes would be willing to restore the senorita if they were paid. But do you think Don Nepomuceno and Don Andres will be content to recover her like that? Will not the Navajos be certain to have treated her shamefully, and will her father and her brother be content to get her back without taking vengeance? Will they be content before they have shed blood for her wrongs?"
It jarred upon all his instincts of race feeling to even approach the subject of Manuelita's wrongs to this Indian. The Navajoes and Pueblos might be mutually hostile, and the Pueblo cacique for the present was his friend, but he was an Indian after all, a member of the race to which belonged those Sioux and Cheyennes whose dreadful deeds were burned in upon the American's brain. Ill-treatment of women captives makes an unbridgeable division between race and race. It constitutes
"----the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame, That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's blood to flame."