Red Mesa

“HOW goes it, Big John?” asked Sid cheerily, coming into the medicine lodge the morning after the big fight.

“Bad breath, worse feet—I’m mostly carrion, I reckon,” smiled Big John weakly from his bandages. “All-same turkey-buzzard.”

Sid laughed gayly. There was no quenching the giant Montanian’s humor so long as the breath of life existed in him! “Guess you’re better, all right!” he answered, relieved.

“Whar’s my dear friend, Mister Spigotty?” inquired Big John with elaborate sarcasm. “Last I seen of him, he was fixin’ to turn loose a machine-gun onto me.”

“We’re still worrying about him, John,” replied Sid seriously. “He got away. The chief’s arrow took him just as he was about to pull trigger on you, but I think that loose serapé he wore saved him. An arrow just loses its punch in it. Anyway, he was only playing ’possum while we were fixing you up, thinking he was done for. We haven’t seen the last of him by a long shot. Ever hear the fate of the Enchanted Mesa, John? That’s what’s worrying me now.”

“Yaas,” said Big John, slowly. “Earthquake shook down the trail up to her, didn’t it? Then the hull tribe up thar jest nat’rally starved to death.”

“That’s what the ethnologists proved when they finally got up on Enchanted Mesa,” agreed Sid. “The Indian legend persisted that a tribe had once been marooned up on that sheer-walled stronghold. No one believed it was more than a legend until the mesa was visited by an aeroplane or something and then they found the ruins of an old pueblo. Did you ever think, John, that this cave of ours is the only gate to Red Mesa? If Vasquez blows that up with dynamite we’re all doomed to starve here—another Enchanted Mesa!”

“Yaas,” sighed Big John, wearily. “But Vasquez shuts hisself out’n his own mine, that way, though. An’ whar’s yore dynamite?”

“He’ll have some. Sure about that,” said Sid, confidently. “A man doesn’t go mining without it nowadays. And then, here’s the dickens of it: he can’t do anything about this mine with us around, see? But, if he can shut us up here, all he’s got to do then is to hang around—and let Nature do the rest! We’ll all starve. See? Diabolical idea, eh? But that’s the cold, cruel, Spanish logic of it, see?”

“Nice hombre!” growled Big John. “Take me out thar, boys, whar I kin see thet cave mouth, and lay the old meat gun beside me—he won’t do no sech thing.”

“You lie still!” Sid soothed him. “Honanta knows about it. He’s got scouts outlying all around the cave mouth.”

“Take me out thar!” insisted Big John. “I ain’t trustin’ no Injuns whar you boys is concerned! Hyar! Put me under a brush shade at the top of that lava dam, whar I can see the cave mouth. ’Twill do me good and give me a job of work!” he urged.

Sid quieted him. “You couldn’t even lift a six-gun, now, old settler! Lie still. Just as soon as you can be moved we’ll set you out there, if it will ease your mind.”

Big John sank back, satisfied, as most sick men are, with a promise. After a time he raised his head again.

“Whar’s Scotty, Sid?”

“I don’t know,” replied Sid, shortly. He shrugged his shoulders and remained silent, his eyes averted.

Big John regarded him keenly for some time. “You boys been quarrelin’, without yore old unkel to go settin’ in the game?” he asked, trenchantly.

“Yes. You see it’s this way,” broke out Sid impulsively. “Scotty’s all for staking out this mine and filing a government claim on it. I couldn’t get him to see it my way, so we—well, we had a row over it,” said Sid. His voice told Big John how it hurt him to have anything come up between himself and such an old chum as Scotty.

“What’s yore idee, son?” asked Big John curiously.

“Haven’t these Indians any rights?” burst out Sid impetuously. “Whose mine is it if not theirs? It’s common property with them, though, just as are the beans they raise and the game they shoot. Along comes Scotty and thinks because he’s a white man he has a right to stake a claim and take the whole thing for himself. And our government will give it to him, too—that’s the pity of it! Did he find it? I guess not! And it’s their home, too! Are we going to turn them out?”

The fire in Sid’s voice told Big John how hot had been that argument between the friends. All this was, no doubt, Sid’s side of it.

“If Honanta knew what Scotty was really set on doing not one of us would leave here alive,” went on Sid, bitterly. “I’ve a good mind to tell him! Anything, sooner than be a party to rank treachery like that!”

“Scotty’s mother’s pretty hard up, ain’t she, Sid?” asked Big John softly.

“Ye-es; a little discomfort, maybe, until he can land a good job. But for that he’s going to turn this whole tribe out, to wander at the mercy of our government—and you know what that is!”

“Sho! The mine’d pay enough to buy them a reservation big enough to support them all in the style in which they is accustomed to!” laughed Big John, weakly, “nawthin’ to it, son.”

“That’s what Scotty says,” replied Sid. “Some day it will pay enough, maybe—if the promoters don’t skin him out of all his rights in the mine first. But meanwhile, what about these Indians and those white miners who will surely come here? Whisky, debauchery of their women, degradation of their young men—isn’t it always the story when our two races come together? How can you prevent it?” he demanded.

Big John shook his head. It was all too perplexing to him, in his present weakened state.

“Think of it, John!” went on Sid, raptly. “A tribe of Indians that has found peace at last! And now that they think they have nothing that the white man wants, along comes one of my race—and my own best friend at that—and he wants the silver and copper on their place! What’s the answer?—Move on! It’s always that! I told him I’d borrow money from my father for him, work for him all my life, if he’d only let this go and keep silent about Red Mesa forever.”

“An’ what’d Scotty say to that?”

“Oh, you know how ’tis!” said Sid wearily. “His head’s sure stuffed with grandiose dreams! I ought to look at it in a big way, he says. Scotty thinks he’s a millionaire already. He talks about buying the tribe a great reservation somewhere, as if Honanta’d agree even to that. What he wants is just peace—and isolation. Nowhere else would his people be free from corruption by every white rapscallion who roams the state. And what mining company would agree to setting aside any sum to pay them for this place? Isn’t it Scotty’s already, by his mere act of driving in a few pegs?”

“Sho!” sighed Big John, sinking back again with weakness. The problem seemed too tough for him. After a silence his voice came dreamily from the cot. “Gold! Sometimes, Sid, I think—our laws are—all wrong,” gasped Big John. “No other race but ours—permits one man—to own these big—nat’ral products—that ought to belong to the—hull country—while thousands of us—starve. ’Tain’t right—son! ’Tain’t right!”

His voice relapsed in utter weariness. Sid went out of the lodge, regretting that his own impetuosity had brought this miserable problem to Big John at such a time.

Honanta met him at the doorway: “Can your big white friend speak?” he whispered eagerly.

Sid wanted to kick himself for remorse! He had forgotten to ask Big John the most important question of all—what had become of Hano. Now it might be too late. The chief’s eyes told him of the long anxious strain of waiting his Indian friend had been through. Honanta had not slept during the night. A small group of braves, armed for the trail and each carrying a bag of pinole at his hip, told him that the search party was here, ready to go after Hano.

He and Honanta reëntered the medicine lodge and stood for some time silent and watchful. The still form of the patient moved not. Finally he turned over, the lines of irksome pain seaming his hawklike face. Slowly his eyes opened and fixed themselves on Sid. Then they turned on Honanta and studied him awhile.

“Whar’d ye git him, Sid?” asked Big John slowly.

“Hano’s father, Honanta, the man whose arrow saved you, John. Can you tell where you saw Hano last?”

“Shore! He was fannin’ out through the Notch on yore pony, Sid. One jump ahead of a posse of greasers. Headed—he seemed to me, for Camino del Diablo,” said Big John, and again his eyes closed.

Honanta faced Sid, his eyes gleaming with triumph. “It is good! My son gave himself to lead the enemy away from our home! He has done well,” he whispered. “Come! We go.”

Out in the fearful sand dunes to the north rode Sid and Honanta with a few of the Apaches. Mounts there were for them all, for Scotty had found their own ponies unmolested and a few of the Mexican horses had been caught. It was a dead and desolate region, with scowling black mountains all about and the sand burying them high up on their flanks. Into this waste Hano had ridden, the flying hoofs of the guerrillas following him as the spurted sand tracks showed. On and on after these tracks Honanta’s party plodded. There was no water here, no vegetation, nothing. By midday they had followed the trail north toward the Camino del Diablo.

Then a cry came from Sid, for far beyond he had spied a lone, low object lying on the stony waste. Empty cartridges lying along the route told that the guerrillas had begun to shoot here. Riding nearer, the object developed into a horse, lying dead and swollen in the sun. Sid gritted his teeth, for it was his own pony.

“Poor Pinto! They must have shot him at long range. Here are Hano’s moccasin prints, though, running.”

Honanta looked down at them in silent musing. Then his eyes swept on ahead. Flying like a deer, Hano had led them on until he had gained the shelter of some distant rocks, the beginning of the black, bare, and waterless Tule Mountains.

The party rode on. Soon the horse tracks showed that the guerrillas had given him up. They could do nothing in the rocks with this Indian, and being on the wrong side of the border evidently had not been at all to their liking. In a sudden turn they had swept off down the Camino del Diablo toward Represa Tanks.

“I take it they’ll all go back to Mexico, Honanta,” said Sid. “They saw nothing of Red Mesa, and I think we’ve seen the last of them.”

Honanta shrugged his shoulders: “My Hano! We must follow on!” he urged.

The Apaches now dismounted and began tracking. But, once in the rocks, Hano had been too keen even for them. Not a further trace could be found. He might have gone anywhere, and wider and wider circles came across not a single footprint.

“Gee! I wish we’d brought Ruler!” exclaimed Sid, vexedly. “Scotty has him to-day, trying to track Vasquez. While that scoundrel is at large nothing is safe.”

Honanta seemed relieved. “My son is safe!” he declared. “He’ll reach Tule Tanks where there is water at this time of the year. Fear not! He will return some day. We go back to Red Mesa and keep watch.”

It was evening before they rode up that vast sandy valley headed by the lava apron which flowed out of Red Mesa standing high on the mountain like some medieval cathedral. Up on its brink Sid noted a brush shade with a figure lying under it. A hand rose and waved down to them as they dismounted and tethered the horses where there was feed.

“Good old John—he’s had his own way!” laughed Sid. “On the job again! Must be getting better, all right. Those are wonderful herbs of yours, chief!”

He found that Scotty had already returned with Ruler. The intercourse between the two chums was now strained and lacked their usual cordial affection, but Sid learned that the dog had been able to track “that Vasquez,” as Big John called him, over the mountain and out into the Pass, where he had captured a stray horse and ridden off southwards.

“That means he’ll spend the night at Papago Tanks,” concluded Scotty. “If we get up a party to go there to-night, we’ll take him.”

“I doubt it,” retorted Sid. “To-night’s the very night he’ll attempt something against us, don’t you worry! We’ve got to stay here, on guard, and keep a sharp lookout on the cave mouth.”

“Why?” asked Scotty, mystified at Sid’s words.

“The fellow brought dynamite, sure as we stand here, Scotty. He could lock us all up in Red Mesa if he could shatter our cave with a stick of it. That’s the only entrance, and the walls are unscalable.”

Scotty looked surprised. “By George, that’s so!” he exclaimed at length, nervously.

He fell silent, and Sid could see that his engineer’s mind was already at work planning some scheme to build a way out in case Vasquez should succeed. They both went over to where Big John lay with Blaze beside him. The big cowman’s eyes were bright, and he greeted them cheerily.

“You-all give this old bird plenty of corn pone and Montana chicken (bacon), an’ he’ll surprise ye, boys!” he chirped. “Ain’t no one goin’ to pull no Enchanted Mesa stuff on us while the old meat gun’s handy!” He reached down his hand to where the .35 lay on the rock beside him. “This-yer’s a good job! Pretty soft! Hed a swell time persuadin’ them Injuns to fix me up hyar, though.”

“We’ll stay here to-night, too, John,” said Sid. “A few extra rifles on watch won’t hurt.”

Far below the location of the cave mouth showed as a mere black crease in the lava as seen from their vantage point. Apache scouts were on guard there, Sid knew, but a stealthy creep, a sudden rush in the dark, the hurling of a bundle of dynamite sticks they could not prevent. Only keen eyesight and the alert senses of a dog could give warning.

He suggested to Scotty to take Ruler down there, which the other was not slow to do, for Scotty acted nervous and constrained as if his conscience troubled him. He, too, was fighting a battle with himself—and apparently he dreaded the recommencement of any argument over the Red Mesa mine, for the meaning of this place was slowly growing on him. Yet it was hard to give up wealth, a career, success as a mining engineer—for an ideal!

The Apaches went through their usual sunset worship that evening. It filled Sid with a mournful regret. If only this life of theirs could go on unmolested! But it would be impossible, unless some great change were to come over Scotty. You could not change people! They were what they were. Scotty meant well; his point of view was the usual thing. The mine belonged to him and to Sid; the Indians they could provide for elsewhere, buy a reservation for them in a far better locality than this—nothing to it!

But Sid knew that the problem went deeper than that. Its isolation was the real value of this place, its real importance to the Indians. Nowhere else would they be free from contact with the whites; nowhere else be free from the inevitable temptations of civilization. Honanta would look at it that way, Sid knew, if all the ins and outs of this situation were to be explained to him, and he would never consent to his band leaving Red Mesa for any exchange whatever.

Later the girl Nahla came to Sid and he was able to comfort her with news of Hano. That he had not broken his honor but instead had risked his life for the tribe and made a splendid coup thereby, Sid could see filled her with a rapture that only he could appreciate. She left him, singing softly a prayer of thanksgiving to the Great Mystery, and Sid went on with his watch.

All the desert lay silent and grand and mysterious under the slow-moving stars as he kept his vigil, ruminating over it all. He wished that his father, Colonel Colvin, could be brought here. Honanta would do whatever those wise old gray hairs thought best. Honanta owed to Colonel Colvin his life, and to an Indian that debt is never paid. There must be a good way out of all this. Colonel Colvin, with his wide knowledge of Indian affairs and his broad sympathies, was the man to point it out.

It was somewhere in the dread hours of the dead of night when the dog Blaze whined softly and Sid could see that he was peering downward, his ears cocked to alert attention. Sid followed the line of his gaze as best he could. Over there near the base of the mountain there was—something! No man in his senses would attempt to climb over that mountain in the dark through all its bristly cactus and choyas, Sid reflected. The only practicable route would be along its base, where the sand would deaden hoofbeats and a man could approach unseen.

But an Airedale can see in the dark far better than humans, better even than a hound. Ruler had given no sign below, but Blaze had evidently become suspicious. Nature had not given him the hound’s nose, but she had compensated by an eyesight equal to a cat’s.

A faint grunt came from Big John as his hand crept down to the rifle below the cot. “Watch yoreself, Sid! Blazie boy, he sees somethin’ out thar an’ don’t ye ferget it!” he warned. “That Vasquez is comin’, shore as shootin’.”

Sid strained his eyes. The blackness of the valley was impenetrable. Once a shock of alarm thrilled through him as a low humped object, half discerned in the black shadows of the mountain base, seemed not where it was when he had last tried to make it out but nearer. But as he looked the blurred form appeared stationary, immovable as one of the boulders. Yet, after a time, when his eyes grew fatigued with the strain, it was gone!

Instantly he raised his rifle and an impulse to give the alarm overpowered him. But he stifled it, peering with all his might. Better let Vasquez come nearer than frighten him off now, otherwise, it would all have to be repeated later.

A brooding stillness kept up. The far-off howls of coyotes came from over the mountains where they were no doubt fighting over the carcasses of those slaughtered sheep. None were around here, with that ghastly feast spread. Sid waited for he know not what to develop, finger on trigger, hand on Blaze’s back to quiet the eager dog.

Then a hoarse growl rumbled in Blaze’s furry throat! He rose unsteadily to his feet and a bitter snarl bared his teeth. Some unfamiliar taint in the air had now come to his nostrils. Sid looked down alert, finger on trigger. A movement on the cot told him that Big John, too, had picked up the .35 and was peering keenly below. But they could see nothing. Nothing moved. All the slope and the sands below it was as silent and inscrutable as death.

Then a throaty bellow came from Ruler below. A bow twanged in the darkness, and there came the noise of a sudden rush of blurred forms in the night. Big John turned half on his side and his rifle rose.

“Gosh, fer a light!” Sid heard him mutter.

Ruler’s challenging bark was roaring out now. The dog had rushed down the slope. And, as if to answer Big John, the sudden flare of a watch-fire sprang up.

It showed the Apaches crouching and shooting their arrows—but it showed also a figure in a flying serapé climbing rapidly up the cleft toward the cave mouth. A sputtering fire shot out sparks; then, as the bellowing roar of Big John’s .35 rent the night, there came a sizzling arc of fire, followed at once by the tremendous, shattering detonation of dynamite!

Red Mesa rocked to its foundations. A long-drawn subterranean moan came from the bowels of the rocks, a growl like a distant thunder—then silence! Sid had gotten one glimpse of a man being blown to bits in the white glare of that explosion which seemed to spew cannonlike out of the bowels of the mountain, then his eyes saw nothing, blinded for an instant by the intensity of it.

“Yah! Greaser!” gritted Big John’s voice in rising intensity of feeling. “Ye done it—curse ye!” Then Sid heard him fall back with a weary, hopeless sigh.

Pitchy darkness! a dreadful, tense and tragic silence! a stunning, appalling silence, wherein all the world held its breath and Sid on the ledge felt his senses grow numb before the portentous import of it! Had Vasquez succeeded?