"We wish to have everything fair," said Stephens. "Why do you refuse?"
"It is very well as it is," muttered Mahletonkwa, looking singularly disconcerted.
"Then will you put the ramrod into the bore and let us see how big a load you have got in it?" persisted the American. "Or would you prefer that I should do it for you?"
He put out his hand as if to take the rifle for the purpose, but the Navajo sulkily caught it up himself. He spoke not a single word, and maintained an impassive face as he picked out a little tuft of rag that was wedged inside the muzzle of the gun, and, tilting the barrel slightly forward, allowed sixty or seventy small round bullets to run out one after the other, plop, plop, plop, into the scale.
A roar of scornful laughter went up from the Mexicans at this demonstration of the American's 'cuteness and the Indian's baffled cunning.
Mahletonkwa deliberately swept the bullets back into his pouch, and replaced the rifle in the scale.
"Thank you," said Stephens, with quiet sarcasm; "now I think we can begin. Don Nepomuceno, will you pour in the silver?"
The bag was untied, and from the mouth of it a stream of big white round coins rattled into the opposite scale. Bigger and bigger grew the heap; the flickering torchlight played on dollars from Mexico and dollars that bore the image and superscription of many an old Spanish king who reigned before Mexico was a republic, on coins stamped in the United States Mint, and on five-franc pieces that displayed the head of Louis Napoleon--pieces that had come over with the French army that for a while had supported the rickety throne of ill-fated Maximilian. And now the stream ran slower and slower, and the rifle began to lift; the Mexican stopped pouring, and taking a handful from the bag tossed them on to the pile one at a time. Gradually the rifle rose, the beam turned, the silver scale descended; yet one more dollar was thrown in and it touched the earth. The tale was complete.
"There's your silver, Mahletonkwa," said the American; "your rifle kicks the beam. Are you satisfied now?"
"I am satisfied," said the Navajo; "it is enough." He took a sack from one of his men and poured the glittering stream into it.
"_Basta!_" said Stephens. "Then it is settled. You acknowledge that my tongue is not double. I have done what I said I would do."
"And now," he went on, addressing the bystanders, "I have only one word more to say to you. Let bygones be bygones. The senorita has been brought back safe and unharmed, and the matter is over and done with.
Let no man molest these people in any way for it, now or at any future time. If any man among you does so, he makes himself my enemy, for I am surety to the Indians in this. If he touches them, he must walk over my dead body. And to you, Navajos, I have one more word to say,"--he had caught sight while he was speaking of the sinister face of Backus among the crowd,--"be advised and go straight back to your own country. Don't hang about here; and above all don't touch whiskey. Take my advice and let the sun of to-morrow find you ten leagues from San Remo--and sober.
I have spoken."
He turned away, and in company with Don Nepomuceno and his son retired to the house, while the Indians remounted their horses and filed off in the moonlight, and the assembly gradually dispersed.
Inside the house Stephens found Manuelita in the sitting-room, with various female friends and relations who had gathered to see the heroine of such an adventure and to hear her story. Her shining eyes and flushed cheeks made her look more bewitching than ever, but he saw how overstrained were her nerves, and he longed to turn out the cackling crowd and carry her off far away to some peaceful retreat where no fear or grief should ever dare to come near her again. But no sooner had he shown himself in the room than a stout old lady who had been Manuelita's nurse in childhood arose and fell upon his neck and kissed him heartily.
"Blessings on you!" she cried, with tearful loquacity, "and may the _Madre de Dios_ and all the blessed saints be with you and reward you for your goodness." She clasped him to her heart. "You are a hero," she said, "a perfect hero! you have brought us back my dear child safe and unharmed from the clutches of those anathematised Indians, whom may the devil fly away with!"
Poor Stephens felt weak; he was helplessly taken aback.
And then a second old lady, the mother of Pedro the peon it was this time, who had been devoted to Manuelita for years, felt it incumbent on her also to demonstrate her gratitude to the deliverer of her darling, and she too bore down on him, and precipitated herself upon his shoulder to mingle her tears, her kisses, and her blessings with the other's.
Stephens's feelings were indescribable.
"'It never rains but it pours,'" he thought. "It's ten years since I've been kissed by a woman, and now I'm hugged by two at once." He endeavoured to extricate himself with becoming gratitude from these entangling embraces, that he might advance to receive the thanks of Don Nepomuceno's sister and her relations. Their expressions of gratitude and admiration were not less ardent than those which had already been showered upon him, but to his immense relief they took a more decorous form. He acknowledged their compliments and their thanks as gracefully as he could, longing all the time to escape from this ordeal and get away as quickly as possible in order to take in hand the matter of the burial of the dead prospector.
As soon as he could decently do so, he took the first opportunity again to call Don Nepomuceno apart. "I want to get you to lend me a spade," he said; "it will save me the journey of going back to the pueblo for one.
I have a little trip to make up into the sierra to-night"; and he explained to the Mexican how he had discovered almost by chance where the bones of the nameless victim of the Navajos were lying.
Don Nepomuceno urged him to put it off. "_Manana, por la manana; porque ahora es tarde_"--"Leave it till to-morrow; it is too late now," he said. "Rest to-night; there is no hurry."
"There's a good moon," said Stephens, "and I don't want to delay about it. It's all in a day's work anyhow. But can you lend me the spade, for if not I must go home after one?"
"But certainly, my dear friend, assuredly I can. Everything I have is at your service. Let me lend you a horse too, for your mare has done her work; leave her here with me to eat corn, and to-morrow she will be fresh."
Stephens very willingly availed himself of this offer, and half an hour later the sharp eyes of Felipe, watching hungrily for his enemy, saw the figure he knew so well riding away quietly from Don Nepomuceno's house in the direction of the sierra, and he detected by the light of the moon that he carried an unusual burden in the shape of a spade across the saddle in front of him. Here in the open the boy did not see his chance to make a sudden attack and take him by surprise at close quarters as he had planned, and being puzzled by the sight of the spade, and full of wonder as to what his errand could be, he ran full speed to the storekeeper's house to inform him of it.
As he arrived there, he saw another mysterious horseman ride away from the corral at the back of the house into the night, and had he been able to get close enough to him he might have seen that he, too, bore a burden, for the rider was no other than the Navajo chief himself, and the burden that he bore consisted of several bottles of Mr. Backus's fiery whiskey, while a round number of what had lately been a part of Don Nepomuceno's precious hoard of dollars were now lining the interior of the storekeeper's wallet.
Stephens's counsel had been disregarded. The Spaniards have a riddling proverb which asks, "What is the cheapest thing on earth?" and the answer is, "Good advice." In the eyes of the Navajo the advice to let whiskey alone was very cheap indeed. The morrow's sun would find him neither ten leagues from San Remo nor sober.
Felipe encountered Backus at his own door, and hastily recounted to him how he had just seen the prospector ride off in the direction of the sierra with a spade across his saddle.
"Be after him then, man," cried the storekeeper; "there's your chance, if you haven't lost it. He's gone after something with that spade, you bet. Keep him in sight, and don't ever let your eye be off him till he begins to use it, and when he's busy at work with it, there's your opportunity. Or if you like to risk a fuss, show yourself boldly, and go up to him and mebbe he won't suspect what you mean to do. But don't miss your chance."
Felipe was gone like a shot.
No sooner had the boy disappeared than Backus began to regret it. He had been rather flustered, before Felipe came up to him, by his interview with the Navajo chief, for Mahletonkwa had begun by taxing Backus with not having kept Stephens from sending for the soldiers, by making away with his letters to the governor and the general, and he had retorted by declaring that he had done so, that no soldiers were coming, and that if Mahletonkwa had allowed himself to be bluffed he had only himself to thank for his idiocy. But they did not waste much time in disputing, for Mahletonkwa's visit to him had not been to quarrel but to obtain liquor, while Backus's strongest desire was to become the possessor of a goodly lot of those shining dollars of Don Nepomuceno that had attracted his cupidity.
Now, however, on thinking over what Felipe had reported, a possible explanation of the spade flashed upon him. Suppose Stephens had got the secret of the mine from the Navajos! He had remarked the vigour and determination with which the prospector had placed himself apparently on the side of the Navajos as against the Mexicans when they arrived.
Probably this was a return for their having shown him the mine, which, moreover, would account for the unaccountable delay of the party in arriving that afternoon.
The idea of the prospector having stolen a march on him like this, in the matter of the mine, irritated him intensely; he knew so little practically of mining that he thought it quite possible that Stephens had started off thus in the night with a spade to dig up silver out of an old mine, as a man might dig up the coins of a buried hoard. Filled with this idea, he took a sudden resolution to follow Felipe and see what took place, and, if there was any secret worth getting hold of, to do his best to make himself master of it.
He hastily belted on his revolver, caught up an overcoat, as he recognised that he might have to lie in wait for an indefinite time, and the night air in the sierra was chill, and started forth on Felipe's track. He knew the direction; and assuming that Stephens had taken the trail for the sierra, according to the information Felipe had brought, he decided to take the same line.
There were plough-lands across on this side of the Santiago River also, and the trail led through a part of these. Where it crossed the ditch that supplied them with water he found the ground wet on the farther bank, and fresh hoof-prints of a horse in the soft earth. Someone had crossed there on horseback not more than fifteen or twenty minutes before; yes, and there, close alongside, was the sharp-toed, inward-curved print of an Indian moccasin. Stephens and Felipe were both ahead of him.
It was only in a place like this, where the soft earth retained a deep impression, that he could pretend to recognise their tracks by the light of the moon, but the fact that he had judged so accurately the course they were steering gave him confidence as he pressed forward, still following the line. And now the foot of the sierra was reached, and the trail plunged abruptly into broken and rugged defiles. Onward he pushed without halting, encouraged again and again by detecting at intervals the tracks of the horse going ahead. At last, however, there came a long interval, when he no longer saw the tracks. For a while he tried to persuade himself that it was only a chance that had caused him to fail to notice them, but he came finally to where the trail crossed a little creek, and the ground was soft and the trees were open enough to let the moonlight fall clearly on the spot. The sign of the Indian horses that had crossed it coming to San Remo during the afternoon was evident, but the footprints of the horse he was following in the other direction were not there. It was undeniable that he must have quitted the trail.
"Now, whereabouts did the son of a gun leave it?" asked Backus of himself; "and how far back was it that I got a squint of his track last?" He pulled out a cold lunch, that he had brought along in his pocket, put on his overcoat, and sat down to take a rest and think things over. If Stephens had simply turned off and camped near the trail, he might have missed him by very little. Perhaps Felipe had been able to keep him in sight, and had stuck to him.
He started to take the back track, keeping a sharp watch out for likely places for a rider to turn out on one side or other of the trail. There were plenty of them, but he found no sign in any of those that he examined. And he had the exasperating sense, that trying to hit off a lost trail by moonlight was as futile a job as a man ever undertook. By daylight a master of woodcraft may assure himself that he has not walked over a hoofprint for which he is searching without seeing it, but the best trailer that ever stepped can miss a thing by moonlight that by day would be as plain to him as a printed book.
"A fool's errand," he said to himself, "that's what I'm on. Here I might be comfortably at home and snug in bed, and instead of that I'm lost up here in the sierra away along after midnight, and nary chance of finding what I come out after." He was thoroughly out of temper by this time, and his language was according. "Mine! d----n the mine! I believe the whole thing is a holy fraud, and if anyone ever again catches me out in the dark, on top of a rugged range of hills hunting for a mine that never existed, I'll give him leave to cut me into slices and fry me like so much bacon." He sat down to rest a moment before deciding finally whether to make any further effort, or just chuck and make the best of his way home.
At this moment, faint but distinct, came the sound of a shot fired somewhere in the mountain off to the south. Backus sprang to his feet instantly, shaking himself free from his despondency like a cloak.
"By the jumping Jemini!" he ejaculated, "there they are, I'll wager.
Felipe must have managed to stick to the trail. Good for him! I wonder if he's managed to plug him? I'll just take a scout round that way and see if I can spot anything."
The moon was beginning to sink in the west, but there was light enough for him to pick his way through the trees and rocks in the direction of the shot. Suddenly he heard five shots in quick succession. They were nearer and clearer than before. But they were followed by absolute silence. Again and again he paused to listen, but no sounds greeted his ear save those that belonged to the woods at night, till at last, after scrambling up a rocky ridge, he became aware of a reflected light shining at the foot of a cliff. That meant a camp-fire. Hist! was that somebody talking? If Felipe had killed his man properly, there was no one for him to talk to. He advanced a step or two cautiously, and paused again. He fancied he could hear a voice; he would put his ear to the ground and see if he could not hear better so; he stooped, and sank on all fours as if he was after a deer, bending his head towards the earth, and as he did so he received a hard blow on his face, and a smart pang shot through his cheek, and at the same moment his ears were assailed by an angry, buzzing rattle.
"My God!" he cried, "I'm stung by a snake!" He threw up his hand to his wounded cheek and staggered to his feet, while the snake, having delivered his blow, slithered away to his home in the rocks. The agony of the poison began to dart through his veins. He struggled blindly forward towards the light, which now seemed ever so far away; he stopped and drew out his knife, with the idea of cutting out the venom, but it was right in his cheek; had it been in a finger he might have chopped it off, but he could not slash away half his own face. He flung the knife wildly from him and reeled forward again, knocking against the trees as he went like a blinded wolf. He had been struck by a big rattler with a full dose of venom in him after his winter's rest. His knees grew weak, and tottered under him; he fell, and struggled up again, only to fall once more; fearful pains ran through him, and his body seemed too big for his skin.
"Help," he cried, in a spent and broken voice; "help me! oh, help!" and he pitched forward and lay prone on his face, writhing and digging his nails into the ground.
CHAPTER XXV
A PREHISTORIC HEARTH
When Stephens took his way through the moonlight, carrying the spade before him on the saddle, his heart was lighter than it had been for days. He was so used to living alone that this novel experience of being constantly in the company of others, night and day, without interruption, ever since the hour when he had rescued Josefa from the cacique, had tired him out. Also he disliked the sense of having others dependent on him, and during the whole of that time he had been burdened with responsibility, first for Josefa and then for the Mexican girl. At last, thank goodness, that was all over and done with. Josefa was secure in Reyna's keeping, and Manuelita was safe at home, while Mahletonkwa had been paid his money and dismissed; now John Stephens was his own man again, and not bound to see after other people's affairs any longer. He could go about his proper business by himself in his own independent way, and that was precisely what he liked better than anything else in the world. As for this matter of finding and burying the dead man's bones, it was one for which he was answerable to nobody but himself. Of his own free will and pleasure he had decided that it should be done, and, accordingly, here he was doing it. And what a useful pretext it had supplied him with for getting away from the fuss and flummery at San Remo. When he thought of those two stout, elderly dames falling upon him like a pair of animated feather-beds, and giving him their blessing, he felt weak; what a mercy he had this excuse of the burial to help him escape from it all! And then his mind reverted to Manuelita sitting there in the midst of the fuss, her eyes bright as ever in spite of fatigue and of the tears of joy she had shed at getting home, her cheeks pink with excitement, and her lively tongue going sixteen to the dozen.