Nevertheless, so great was his anxiety on the subject that he had broken through the reserve natural to him in this matter.
Before answering, the cacique threw a look of pity at him. It was neither pity for her lot, nor for his state of anxious suspense concerning it. It was the contemptuous pity of superior knowledge for the uninstructed person who did not understand Navajos and their ways.
"She's all right," said he; "the Navajos won't do her any harm unless they are driven to kill her."
"You don't mean to tell me that's true?" cried Stephens eagerly. "I can't understand how it can be. I know some things about the plains Indians, and I know no woman is spared by them for one hour after she becomes a captive. Do you mean to say that the Navajos are different from all other Indians?"
The cacique laughed with conscious superiority.
"Of course they are different," he answered, "and they always have been.
Didn't I say before that they are very foolish, ignorant people? And it is quite true that they are afraid to use violence to captive women, and I will tell you why. It is all because of a foolish religion of their own that they have. You know they are mere heathens; they don't know anything about heaven and purgatory and the rest of it, about all the things the padre tells when he comes to see us. They have foolish stories which they believe, and which the devil has taught them."
Stephens could not help interrupting him. "But how about that turkey-feather business of your own," he asked, "and your sacred snakes?"
The cacique looked shocked. "Oh, those are our own Santiago mysteries,"
he said seriously; "we believe what the padre tells us, but we have our own Shiuana--the spirits--to deal with as well, and we have our own way of doing it. That is right for us. But these Navajos have most foolish ideas about the next world. You know they think when they die they will go to another place?"
"Oh, yes," said the American, "the happy hunting-grounds."
"That's not the name they give it," said the cacique, "but all the same it's a place they want to go to very much, where they can keep plenty of sheep and horses upon grass richer than the grass of the Chusca Mountains. But they think, silly fools, that before they can get to this good place they have to cross a dreadful dark river that it is very hard to get over. If they can't get over they think that they must wander about for ever in cold and dark and misery. And they think that there is in the next world a wonderful old woman, whom they call Whailahay, and she lives there and knows all the fords of this river, and without her help no one can get over it. So they all want to please her very much.
But, you see, Whailahay is a woman, and is very angry if women are ill-treated, at least so they think; and then, if they haven't let the women on earth have their own way in everything, and do just what they please, Whailahay is very cross with the men, and she won't help them to get across the dreadful dark river to the good place when they die, but leaves them to starve for ever, wandering about shivering and wretched.
It is a most foolish story, and the result is that the Navajos spoil their women entirely. They dare not lay a hand on them to keep them in proper order"; he looked full in Stephens's eyes as he said this, and Stephens looked in his eyes, and each knew the other was thinking of the beating of Josefa.
"No, they dare not touch them in any way against their will," continued the cacique, "and the women are masters of the men, and all in consequence of a foolish story about an old witch. Don't you think it is a foolish story, Sooshiuamo?"
Stephens's heart bounded with exultation, and he felt as if a heavy load were lifted from his breast.
"Foolish!" he cried, turning in his saddle with a triumphant laugh of joy, "why, Cacique, don't you see, if that's so she'll be safe. Foolish!
I think it's the very best story I ever heard in my life. Bully for old Madam Whailahay!"
CHAPTER XVIII
HUNTING A TRAIL
On they went, on and on, till beneath the rugged peak of the Cerro de las Viboras they saw before them a glorious open valley of a thousand acres, facing the southern sun, and green with young grass.
"This is the Valle Lindito," said the cacique, "and there is our horse herd." A band of two or three hundred horses and mares were grazing peacefully in the valley. It was early yet for foals, but a few here and there were visible, frisking and capering round their dams.
An Indian stallion nickered proudly at the sight of the strangers, and trotted towards them, high and disposedly, tossing his crest and holding his head aloft; at the sight of him Morgana whinnied back, and lo! from a patch of willow brush leaped forth an Indian youth who was on watch; bareback he came full speed on a flying pony and whirled a lasso round and round, and chivied the guardian of the herd back to his mates. Then he rode up to the four and greeted them, and rapid question and answer ensued. The youth was young Ignacio, son to Josefa's elderly would-be bridegroom. No, they had seen no Navajos, nor any tracks of any. Nothing had troubled the herd except that the mountain lions had killed a foal.
The travelling Mexican sheep herds were wandering hither and thither through the mountains, as usual, seeking their appointed stations for the lambing month ere it began. The Jicarilla Apaches had been through not long before and had killed some cattle of the Mexicans--the Indian laughed as he recounted this--and the Mexicans were very angry, but could not catch them. He hinted that Mexican beef tasted sweet, and laughed still more, but the cacique frowned. He did not love the Mexicans--far from it--but his policy was to keep on good terms with them. He repeated his questions about the Navajos.
The rest of the Indian herders came up, and now came news. Yes, they had seen tracks of a travelling party which they supposed to be Indians.
Eleven ponies there were altogether, going north-westward from the Mesa del Verendo. No, they had seen no one to speak of, and they had seen no tracks of any party of Mexicans in pursuit. They were astonished when they heard the tale of the abduction of Manuelita, but they had heard of the killing of the Navajo by Don Andres from the shepherds of a flock of the Preas, which they had met in the Valle Cajon. As for the tracks they had seen that morning, they might be those of Mahletonkwa and his band, or they might have been made by some other Navajos or by Jicarillas.
"_Quien sabe?_" But they told the cacique exactly where he would find them next day and then he could judge for himself.
Three fresh horses were now selected and caught. The cacique's horse and Stephens's mule were now turned loose in the Indian herd, where the mule brayed frantically for his beloved Morgana. A hasty meal was eaten, and with young Ignacio added to their party they set forward once more into the wilderness.
Ere the sun was an hour high next morning the cacique and Miguel and young Ignacio were critically examining the eleven ponies' tracks, and trying to make out whether they were those of Mahletonkwa's band or no.
"Almost certainly, yes," was the verdict, and they followed at once hotly on the trail. The fact that they were exactly eleven in number made the probability very great, and the absence of any other later tracks made it certain that if they had really hit it off they must have cut the trail in front of the Mexicans.
The cacique crowed triumphantly.
"Did I not tell you, Sooshiuamo, that the Navajos would throw the Mexicans off the scent on the Mesa del Verendo. You may be very sure that is what has happened. They all scattered out there on the hard ground, and then they turned their course from west to north, and then met again by agreement miles away, and not on the mesa at all, but down below here. The Mexicans will have wasted half the day yesterday in trying to follow their tracks on the Mesa del Verendo, and I expect they are at it yet; while we, you see, who started hours after them, have cut the trail far ahead. Did I not tell you we were great trailers, Sooshiuamo?"
Sooshiuamo could not help thinking that the success of which the cacique was so proud was a good deal due to the information that had been given them, but he wisely did not say so. And at any rate the cacique was entitled to the credit of having guessed rightly the route Mahletonkwa would take, and having steered on his own authority a judicious course to intercept it. They had left the high upland pastures now, and the sierra lay behind them; they were heading into a rolling country of dry grama grass and cedar- and pinon-trees, a warmer country than the mountains, but not so well watered. Away to the south-west was visible a lofty conical peak standing by itself; it was an extinct volcano.
Presently the trail of the eleven ponies turned towards the conical peak.
"I knew it," cried the cacique triumphantly again, "I knew how it would be. The Lava Beds are yonder, and the Navajos are going for them; they have been making a big circuit to throw the Mexicans off the track, but now they have turned for the Beds again. They meant to go there all along. Oh, didn't I know it? Eh, Sooshiuamo?"
Sooshiuamo readily admitted the accuracy with which the Pueblo had grasped the intentions of the Navajos, and praised his skill. Presently they came to a place where the party they were pursuing had halted for a rest and a meal, and here the question as to who they were was decided beyond all doubt. Among the many moccasin-tracks which ran all about the little fire they had made, the keen eyes of the Indians detected the print of a shoe with a heel, the small, dainty shoe of a civilised woman.
"Look," said Miguel, who found it first, pointing it out to Stephens, who, keen-sighted though he was, barely distinguished it in the dry, sandy soil, "there is the foot of the senorita. Look how she is tired and stiff with riding, and walks with little steps. And here is where she lay down on a blanket to rest. Oh, she will be very tired."
Literally, these Indians seemed able to tell every single thing she had done in that camp during the half-hour or hour that had probably been spent there. It was a camp made late in the afternoon of the day before, so they settled. "Just when we were at the horse herd in the Valle Lindito," said the cacique, who seemed to read the signs left by the different members of the band and by their horses with as much ease and confidence as Stephens would have shown in gathering the meaning of a page of a printed book by glancing his eyes over the hundreds of little black crooked marks on the page, known to civilised beings as letters. But in the art of reading signs the cacique was a past master, where Stephens, to follow up the simile, had but just mastered the alphabet and was struggling with words of one syllable.
Forward once more on the trail, with the increased ardour given by the certainty that now there could be no mistake. As they drew near the Lava Beds, and the shades of evening began to fall, the cacique grew anxious.
"The Tinne,"--Tinne was the Navajos' own name for themselves, and the cacique now began to use it regularly in speaking of them, feeling himself, as it were, on their ground,--"the Tinne," he said, "are sure to keep a close watch on the edge of the Beds where their trail goes in, so as to see who is following them. Let us turn off their trail here and go aside; there is a spring at the edge of the Beds a little north of here; we will camp there for the night, we can do nothing in the Beds in the dark; also if the Mexicans have found the trail again, as they ought to have done by this time, they may follow it part of the night by moonlight and be able to overtake us here. It would be well to have them here before we go into the Beds. Don't you think so, Sooshiuamo?"
Stephens had to agree. It grated on him terribly to leave Manuelita for a second night in the hands of Mahletonkwa and his band, but it was more than doubtful whether they could possibly find where they had her concealed in the gathering darkness, and there was a good chance of being in a better position to deal with the matter in the morning.
It was already night when the cacique skilfully and cautiously led them to the little spring he knew of near the Beds; they watered their horses here, and drank, too, themselves, and camped under a cedar bush not far away, without a fire lest the light should betray them. They chewed their tough, dried meat, and ate a little parched corn, and kept watch by turns in the moonlight over their horses during the first half of the night. But nothing disturbed them, and Faro gave no sign of suspecting an enemy at hand when Stephens scouted round with him before moonset, and after that they slept securely.
He was awakened after dawn by the cacique. Miguel had already scouted some way on their back trail; there was no sign of the Mexicans coming up; and the cacique now made a somewhat alarming suggestion. Suppose that the Mexicans had not lost the trail on the Mesa del Verendo, as he had conjectured, but had caught the Tinne there and been unlucky enough to be beaten off by them in a fight. It was a contingency that had not occurred to Stephens before, and redoubled his anxiety.
The cacique, as usual, had a plan. He declined, with their small party, to follow the Navajos' trail straight into the Lava Beds. They would be sure to walk into a trap, and if there had been a fight, and the Tinne blood was up, they would be shot down mercilessly from an ambush. He felt sure the Navajos had established themselves on a little oasis there was in the middle of the Beds, where there was grass for their horses; and he proposed to enter the Beds more to the north, where he knew of a practicable place for horses to go in, and so work round to the oasis on the farther side.
This seemed so reasonable that Stephens saw nothing for it but to accede, and accordingly, after watering their stock, they at once proceeded to put it in action.
The Lava Beds were an awful country for horses. From the old volcano an immense mass of lava had flowed over all this part of the country, like a broad river, twenty or thirty feet deep and miles in width. It was a mass of perfectly naked rock, and was incredibly cracked and fissured.
The change to it from the open country was instant and abrupt. You could gallop over rolling pasture-lands right to the edge of the Beds, where you must dismount and advance on foot, stepping warily from rock to rock, and choosing carefully a route that it was possible for a sure-footed horse to pick his way over.
After a tedious and toilsome progress of this sort, they came at last to a little opening, a sort of island, as it were, in the lava flow, only that it was lower, most of it, than the actual surface of the flow. Here was a patch of grass, and the cacique suggested that Stephens should remain here with the horses while he and his young men scouted on foot in the direction of the larger opening, or oasis, where he suspected that the Navajos had established themselves.
Stephens was very unwilling to stay behind, but he had to admit that the scouts would probably get on better without him. Accordingly he consented, and stretched himself on his blanket on the ground, holding the end of the mare's lariat in his hand, while the Indians, drawing their belts tighter and grasping their guns, started off in the new direction indicated by the cacique.
Long he lay there waiting; an eagle-hawk, attracted by the sight of the horses, swung lazily through the blue sky overhead, and seeing nothing there to interest him sailed off majestically to a richer hunting-ground beyond the barren lava flow. Many thoughts coursed through the mind of the impatient man. He was disappointed that the Mexicans had not come up, and he was impressed by the intense watchfulness and seriousness of the cacique. The Pueblo chief clearly felt himself now in enemies'
country, and knew that they were face to face with the chances of a desperate struggle. Any mistake now might land them instantly in a fight, with the odds more than two to one against them; to say nothing of the additional peril this would bring upon Manuelita. Yet something must be done for her, and that without delay. Stephens could not endure the thought of leaving her another day and night in the power of those savages. He had been partly reassured by the cacique's account of the superstitious influence of Whailahay in protecting women, but still--the possibilities that presented themselves to his mind were too awful. No, come what would, whether the Mexican party arrived in time or not, when he found the Navajos something should be done. And then his eye lit on the figure of the cacique bounding from block to block of the Lava Beds, and coming towards him with manifest excitement in his air.
The Navajos were found.
"We've caught up with them at last," said the Pueblo chief in an excited half-whisper. "All the Tinne are camped in a hollow just beyond there,"
and he pointed eagerly to a rise in the lava bed that bounded their view to the immediate front.