Red Mesa

AS Sid’s scattered wits returned to connected thought, after the first few moments following that stunning detonation, his mind and his hopes went out first to Scotty. How could he and the Apaches down there have survived, right in the storm center of that explosion? For a time he dared not even call out, nor was there the least sound of human beings alive down there to reassure him. Not even a faint groan came up to his listening ears.

Still there was at least a ray of hope. That white glare of the explosion had come out like the flare from the mouth of a cannon. The tunnel, in fact, was a vast stone cannon. Vasquez, true to Sid’s diagnosis of the Latin mind, had planned his coup logically, had thrown the bundle of dynamite sticks fair and true right into the mouth of the cave where it would do the most damage. But he had not reckoned on the laws of mechanics, the immutable principles of action and reaction. For the forces of that explosion had blown right back upon him who had thrown the charge. It had rent him to bits, and Sid had seen enough to be sure that the victim had been the rash Vasquez himself.

Was there not a hope, then, that Scotty and the Apaches, standing to one side of the direct blast, had survived it? A man can stand near the muzzle of a twelve-inch naval gun and yet not be hurt, beyond the temporary shock to ears and nerves.

In spite of the appalling stillness which kept up, Sid found courage at last to call out.

“Scotty! Leslie, old chum!—Are you still alive?” his voice quavered out into the night.

There was a moment of anxious waiting. Then: “Hi!—Don’t worry, Sid! We’re all right!” called up Scotty’s voice in a peculiar dead inflection, for his ears were evidently numb. “The thing went off like a cannon. Only Vasquez himself, who was in the direct line of it, got killed. We’re all shaken up some, but nothing serious.”

Sid whooped with joy. Never till then did he realize how deep was his affection for Scotty—that enduring bond that a mere temporary difference could affect only superficially.

“The cave mouth’s shattered, but I think we can pick it loose,” came Scotty’s voice more strongly after a time.

Presently the watch-fire flared up again and there came sounds of men heaving and working and the crash of stones tumbling down the lava apron.

Then: “Yeaay—Sid!... Listen! She’s all right! She’s clear! I’m coming right up!” yelled Scotty’s voice, and there were muffled voices of men entering the cave.

Honanta and Scotty joined them on the apron ledge shortly after. Sid felt a deep restful sense of thankfulness now that it was all over. The menace of starvation for Red Mesa was gone; Vasquez, the only other person who knew about the mine, could do no more harm. He wanted to sleep now, and sleep well. After that, a last appeal to Scotty in which Big John, he was sure, would join him. After mutual congratulations had been exchanged he got his bed roll and laid it out beside Big John’s cot, thoroughly tired and relaxed. The cowman was sleeping peacefully. After that glad hail of Scotty’s, Nurse Nature had claimed him immediately!

It was not until morning that the real disaster to Red Mesa became known. A cry from one of the squaws awoke Sid. He rolled sleepily out of his blankets, to find her pointing excitedly at the lava basin of the tank. It was half empty!

Down at least six feet below the rim was now the level of the water, as Sid stared at it unbelievingly. It was all too cruel to sense at first; too great an irony of fate for the human mind to comprehend. But, after the first interval of stupefaction, Sid understood what had happened. That explosion had opened a fissure in the lava bottom of the tank—and Red Mesa was slowly bleeding to death! A rush to the rim of the basin confirmed it. There, down along one edge of the apron, a thin trickle of water was flowing silent, unceasingly sapping away the life blood of his ideal Indian community, giving their precious indispensable water to those thirsty sands of the desert drinking it up far below!

What a thing is puny man! Armed with the unlimited strength of dynamite, one man had done all this; destroyed at a blow all living things that flourished here, upset the huge yet delicate balance of Nature, driven into a wandering exile a once happy people.

A great sob rose in Sid’s throat as what all this meant came over him in an overwhelming wave of emotion. What Scotty might have done in leading here the slow advance of civilization, that villain Vasquez had brought about in one mad moment of callous cupidity. Sid ground his teeth in helpless rage. Then he turned and raced for Scotty’s bunk up near the mine. He, the engineer—he could stop this catastrophe if any one could!

Already, as he passed, he could see the bottom of the tank, dim and muddy below the fast vanishing level of the water. Around its edges Apache women were wailing and wringing their hands, some drawing water while any yet remained. Honanta and his braves had gathered and stood looking down at the tank in stolid perplexity, helpless, knowing not how or why this cruel thing was happening, nor what to do.

“Wake, Scotty! Quick! Our water’s all going from the tank! Help us, old man—hurry!” shouted Sid wildly, shaking him.

Scotty sat up, and immediately his eyes fell on water level, now far down in the lava basin, the pool itself shrunk to half its normal size.

“That explosion must have cracked a fissure open somewhere, last night,” said Sid. “Only look, Les!” he groaned.

Scotty pulled on his boots rapidly. “No use trying to stop it from below, Sid,” he declared with the sure knowledge of the engineer. “The water head would burst any dam we could build down there. We’ve got to find the crack in the bottom up here and stop it. All hands into the tank!” he cried energetically.

Sid waved his arm to Honanta and his bucks to jump in and join in the search for the leak, but they stood back, arms folded, eying him gloomily. Childlike, in many ways, is the Indian mind! Before anything whose cause they cannot reason out they stand helpless. Only Niltci followed Sid and Scotty into the water, and that from blind obedience.

“Hunt for a hole in the tank bottom, Niltci!—Hunt for all your worth!” ordered Sid, handing him a stick as they waded about the pool. Its water was now less than three feet deep, the bottom smooth and slippery with mud. Somewhere down there a crevice, maybe only an inch wide, was drawing down the water—but where! The bottom was smooth and hard as flint; nowhere did the searching sticks find any crack that had no bottom.

Scotty’s face grew more and more concerned as they reached the end of the tank away from the lava outflow. Here it grew deeper and the bottom was all ragged pot holes of scoriated lava. Here gases had forced their way out from below while yet the molten stuff was soft. His stick felt down into deep jagged holes and could tell him nothing as to whether a fissure existed at the bottom of them or not.

In spite of his forced air of cheerfulness the outlook grew more and more hopeless. Somewhere down here was the leak, but where? Finally he came to a deep jagged pot-hole which swallowed his stick and more—down to the limit of his armpits. He sent Niltci for a pole, his face drawn with anxiety, for failure as an engineer, utter and complete, was now staring him in the face. When it arrived it went down into that pot-hole its full depth, to touch only ragged scoriations of lava, at the bottoms of any one of which might be the fissure.

“Sid, we’re done!” cried Scotty, hopelessly, tears starting from his eyes. “Only concrete and lots of it can fix this! Oh, Sid, I’d give anything in the world to be able to help them!” wept Scotty, prodding futilely with his pole in a mechanical effort to relieve the stress in his mind. “They must all go! All this must die!”—waving his arm around at the green and flowering things that made the valley gracious. “You were right, Sid! This is the object lesson I needed—gorry, but I needed it in all my visionary pride! This is what I would have done to Honanta’s people, only in another way. The pity of it! I see it now—I don’t want their mine—at such a price!”

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” barked Sid rebelliously. “Throw in rocks—dirt—skins—anything to stop it!”

Scotty shook his head mournfully.

“We’d be too late—look at the water now!”

At once the hopelessness of it all overtook even Sid’s buoyant nature. The water was now only two feet deep and a wide area of glistening mud swept down from the brink. The edges of it had already dried in the desert air.

Sid waded out and faced Honanta, shaking his head solemnly.

“My son, why did the white man do this cruel thing?” asked the chief, his deep voice filled with gentle rebuke. “My people must wander forth, now—I know not where.”

“Because he wanted your mine, Honanta!” gritted Sid passionately, over the injustice of it all. “To get it for himself he hoped to lock us all up here, to die of starvation, like the people of the Enchanted Mesa. And now look how it has turned out! I stand here—ashamed, Honanta—ashamed of my race!”

“Take your mine! It is always so when the white man finds gold! All this must die! The red man must go!”

“No!” barked Scotty wildly through his tears. “No, chief! You won’t have to go! Concrete can fix it! As soon as the water is gone we shall get at the crack and seal it. We’ll mend the basin and then leave you in peace forever. I promise it, here and now! Never, never shall any mention of your mine cross my lips!”

“My son, many, many rains it took to fill that tank! My people were careful to use each year no more than the Great Mystery saw fit to send us. We have done no wrong, yet is the face of the Great Mystery hid behind a cloud. We must go forth!” sighed Honanta.

He turned to his old men and gave an order. Immediately the whole village became the scene of busy preparations for the march. Sid watched them with tears in his eyes, while Scotty protested vainly to Honanta. Where could they go? To Tinajas Atlas, perhaps, there to hide in some rocky fastness of the desert, forced to fetch water from long distances and sooner or later to be discovered at the tank by our border rangers, rounded up and sent back to the reservation.

It must not be! He and Scotty had brought all this upon them; it was their responsibility to see to it that another and a better home should be found for them. Perhaps Scotty was right, in the long run. If they could retain control of this mine and operate it successfully, there would be money enough to repay Honanta forever.

By noon the village reported ready for the march. Men, women, and children, they would go forth on foot into the pitiless desert, and somehow, through untold sufferings, incredible endurance, would make that march to a new home—but it could never, never, approach the freedom and peace of this spot, the Arms of the Great Mystery!

Towards its high red walls Honanta now raised his hands in silent prayer and farewell. Soon it would become a sun-baked, scorched, arid ruin, the home of saguarro and choya, a place that no one but white men would want. With its empty, bare and mud-caked basin, that once held smiling and life-giving water—Red Mesa was dead.

Sid looked on, so overcome with sympathy that he had not given their own problems a thought. Yet, with the last of the water, they too would face the pitiless scourge of thirst. Big John would have to be moved to Papago Tanks, somehow. But all that could wait.

“Good-by, white boy!” said Honanta, coming up to grip his hand strongly. “Tell your father that, some day, I will visit him—when my people are provided for.”

He turned to give the order to march.

Who sneers at coincidences? They happen to us daily, in those abrupt meetings of chance whose obscure workings of cause and effect we know nothing of, nor can trace. One happened now; for, as Honanta had raised his head to give the order, at that instant there came a hail from Big John on his cot on the apron brink.

“Hi, Sid!—Say!—Hyar comes yore daddy!—An’ that Apache feller!” he sang out. For a moment Sid stood looking at him in sheer amazement. Had Big John gone delirious? How and why had Colonel Colvin come here? But if it was really, truly so——

“Wait, Honanta! Wait!—You shall see my father, and your own son, sooner than any of us expected!—Wait!” cried Sid, running after the chief to seize his arm.

With Sid, unable to comprehend how or why his father could actually be here, they went together along the empty tank to the apron brim.

But it was true! Down there on the sands of the valley two riders were coming, and Honanta gave a great cry as his keen eyes recognized the smaller of the two.

“Hano!—My son! My son!” he yelled, his stoic Indian reserve broken down by the intensity of the moment.

Sid waved energetically to the other rider whose thick-set figure told that he was an older man, undoubtedly Colonel Colvin himself.

Presently a hail came from them both, and then the younger man led on, showing the older one how to reach the cave mouth. After a tense, excited interval of waiting Colonel Colvin issued out of the medicine lodge and ran toward Sid. Hano stood by the lodge, the girl Nahla already passionately clinging to him. Honanta stalked toward his son as all the tribe stood by and watched.

“Gad!—Sid, my boy, we’ve had some ride!” burst out Colonel Colvin bluffly, as Sid went to his arms and Scotty gripped at his extended hand. “This Apache boy, Hano, found me at the ranch and told me you-all were in trouble. Seems that he escaped from some Mexicans out of the desert and reached the railroad at Tacna. There he sold all he had and bought a ticket to our station, Colvin’s, on the main line. ‘Knew my name, long time’ is all I could get out of him. But it was plain enough that you were in trouble down here and he wanted me to come quickly, so we took the train to the Ajo Mines, bought horses and rode here.—Hey! What the nation’s the matter with our John?” he broke off suddenly as his eyes fell on the occupant of the cot.

“Oh, I jest nat’rally stopped a leetle lead in a fight we had with the greasers hyarabouts, Colonel,” grinned Big John. “Jest hed to, sir!—Them durned boys won’t be satisfied till they kills this ole puncher, nohow, I’m thinkin’!” he grimaced whimsically. “Lots doin’ ’round hyar, Colonel! Let them boys tell you all about it.”

He sank back happily while Sid told him the whole story of the Red Mesa plaque, of the trip to Pinacate and then of Vasquez’s diabolical attempt and the consequent loss of all their water.

Colonel Colvin listened sympathetically. Before Sid had finished he felt a touch on his elbow and turned to find Honanta facing him.

“Does my white father remember the massacre of Apache Cave—and this?” the chief asked, his voice vibrating with emotion as his hand touched the gold double eagle dangling on his chest.

“Yes—a bitter memory, chief!” replied Colonel Colvin. “The Army does not talk of it much. Curious!” he exclaimed, looking at the coin and evidently searching back in his memory. “Why, I was in that fight myself!—I remember that coin—or a piece just like it—I gave one to a poor squaw whom we found badly wounded with a baby in her arms. She was the only one left alive in all those heaps of slain Apaches. Gad, but that massacre was a devilish piece of business for the Army to have to do!”

“I am that baby, my white father!” said Honanta, drawing himself up dramatically. “The sole living survivor of Apache Cave—and unconquered! My heart told me that this young man, whose name was also Colvin”—indicating Sid—“was your son. Therefore I spared him, when my old men advised that he be slain, since he had discovered this our refuge.”

He waved a fringed arm around at the mighty walls of Red Mesa. “This was our home!” he declaimed. “No more! The white man came, and he took our water. All of it! Our home is dead. We must go!”

“Where will you go, chief?” asked the Colonel, eying Honanta keenly.

“I know not,” said Honanta, wearily. “Somewhere out into the desert, where my people can find peace again.”

“Listen, chief!” said Colonel Colvin earnestly. “Where I live is called the Grand Cañon of the Gila. Your people knew it well, once. High above us towers a mighty peak, all orange in the glow of the sun, and across it a great band of pure white. That peak you have heard of, I know, chief!” declared Colonel Colvin, and Honanta nodded in confirmation. “In the valley of our river are timbered ranges, where deer and bear and turkey run wild and trout fill the streams. Across from us are steep precipices along which leads the old Apache Trail—the home of your fathers, chief. I own much land there, plenty for all of us. This mine the boys tell me of in your Red Mesa will buy more. If that golden double eagle means any obligation to you, chief, will you come to my place with your whole band—there to live as did your fathers?”

Honanta hesitated. His eyes beamed with pleasure, yet a troubled, doubtful expression in them told Sid that he was wondering how long our government would let them stay there. Better than the reservation the freedom of the desert!

“That orange mountain was once a sign of the Great Mystery to your people, chief,” went on the Colonel, his voice still more persuasive and compelling. “It stands there yet, a sign that His ways are unchanging, His mercy everlasting. Come! There is room there for all of us!—and I will see to it myself that our government grants you freedom—as it has already done for the Mohave Apaches.”

Honanta’s eyes widened at that last! It was news to him that the policy of our government had in any way liberalized! Then he stretched out his hand, his eyes glowing.

“My white father is kind! He is noble-hearted and just!” he exclaimed. “Would that he and my own father, Chief Chuntz, had known each other otherwise than over a rifle barrel! I owe you my life, Colonel Colvin; you have brought me back my son. I thank the Great Mystery that He whispered in my heart to spare yours! In the name of my people, I accept your offer, Colonel, gratefully!”

“Good!” exclaimed the bluff old colonel, heartily, as their hands clasped.

One by one, family by family, the Apaches bade farewell to their homes and then descended the cave tunnel. A procession followed made up of Sid and Scotty, Colonel Colvin and Niltci, carrying Big John on an improvised stretcher. Two horses with the Colonel and Sid riding them, bore a pole litter for Big John thereafter; the rest were laden with every jar of water the Apaches possessed. And so the cavalcade set forth north into the desert.

Sid turned to look back for the last time at Red Mesa. High and lifted up, its walls rose in huge flanks out of the mountain side, glaring in the burning sun. Soon there would be no life there, no luxuriant roothold for green living plants, no happy home for a simple people. When Scotty got his company organized—and he did, in due time, but that is beyond the province of this story—there would be a scene of sweating activity there, ore cars coming and going, men and burros toiling, the great tank repaired and giving water to them all.

But Sid did not want to think of that. Rather he would like always to remember it as the one place he knew where once Indians had lived as their forefathers had, long before the white man came—in simple, reverent faith in the Great Mystery, in the simple needs of a free people, in the simple, sure, old foundations of Indian morality—Courage, Honor, Truth, Chastity.

Three days later they reached Ajo Mines. The company lent the Colonel a train of empty ore cars and the railroad took them to the main line. Thence the Colonel led Honanta and his people to a land of mighty mountain ranges, of green alfalfa fields strung along a rushing river dominated by beetling crags, of herds of fat cattle grazing in a land of plenty. And here, under the protection of the name Colvin, in the timbered hills of their forefathers, Honanta and the Yellow Bear clan of the Apache at last found peace.

THE END