Red Mesa

THAT torrential outburst which raged out from the Apache chief seemed to scorch and wither with shame the young Indian buck who stood beside Sid. The chief was upbraiding him in the most scathing terms in the Apache language, as Sid understood it, for the folly of capturing and bringing here a white man to their stronghold. Sid’s own person was safe according to Indian honor so long as he remained in the enemy camp, but what to do with this white man, now that he was here, would be a matter that only the old men could decide in council. As for the youth, whose name Sid learned was Hano, he was being condemned to the direst penalties for his act. The chief finally paused, arms folded across his chest, and eyed the youth sternly, awaiting what reply the culprit could make.

“The white man was spying on us, my father,” replied Hano, simply. “It seemed best to take him, lest he get away and tell others.”

“Why did ye not follow him, then? If he saw nothing you could have let him go! If he saw—kill and kill quickly!” thundered the angry chief. “Die thou shalt instead!”

The youth hung his head, unable to answer. It disturbed Sid strangely to learn that this boy was indeed the chief’s son, and that this Spartan sentence was being passed on him by his own father. He himself would have pardoned Hano, for youth does not think far ahead; it acts mainly on impulse. That he, an enemy, might discover the secret stronghold of an Apache clan and should therefore have been slain or taken seemed to Sid, too, the natural reasoning for Hano to have followed. Sid felt grateful that he had, for some obscure reason, probably the bond of youth itself, spared his life instead.

The chief, however, paid Hano no further attention but turned on Sid those piercing black eyes that seemed to look through and through him.

“Young white man, who are you and what is your business down here?” he demanded sternly.

“My name is Sidney Colvin, son of Colonel Colvin, U. S. Army, retired,” answered Sid, facing the chief respectfully.

The Apache’s eyes widened for an instant, startled, if such a stoic could be. “Colvin!” he exclaimed.

Then all expression faded from his face. His hand, however, rose, involuntarily to touch a gold ornament that hung pendent from his neck. Sid thought for a moment that a play of memory seemed passing in the black inscrutable depths of his eyes. Under that eagle gaze, though, he himself could not long endure; in sheer embarrassment he dropped his own eyes until they, too, fastened themselves on the ornament. It was a gold twenty-dollar piece, pierced with a small hole in its upper rim and hanging from a rude chain of beaten silver. To Sid the curious thing about it was that it was the sole thing of white-man origin about the chief’s person.

“And your business?—a prospector, I suppose,” said the chief, after another silent scrutinizing interval.

“No, ethnologist,” replied Sid quietly.

“Ethnologist!” echoed the chief. An expression of strong disgust crossed his stern face. “These learned fools who misrepresent and misunderstand the Indian worse than all other white men!—Pah!”

Sid was more than astonished at this outburst. This Apache had evidently been well educated—once—perhaps at Carlisle. Why, then, had he come here to live with this wild band and become their chief? That could wait; at present he was glad to talk ethnology with this educated Indian, for Sid, too, had felt that disgust over the stupidity and lack of understanding displayed by the average ethnologist’s treatise indicated in the chief’s tones.

“It’s astonishing how much they do misunderstand you,” agreed Sid. “Knowing as they should the Indian’s fundamental belief that all life, man, animal, and growing tree, has a soul which is the gift of the Great Mystery and returns to Him in the end, how can they report your Indian ceremonials as mere spirit worship, devil worship, sun worship—Gad! It makes my blood boil!” Sid spoke vehemently, warming up as his own indignation over the vapid misunderstandings and the utter lack of comprehension of most ethnologists’ reports enraged him. “Chief, you know, and I know the Great Mystery! As one of your own great men has said, ‘He who may be met alone, face to face, in the shadowy aisles of the forest, on the sunlit bosom of the great prairie, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, or yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky!’ Because the Indian is too reverent to speak of Him by name, our worthy ethnologists report that this and that tribe believes in no supreme God, only in spirits—bosh!”

Sid’s eyes sparkled with the intensity of his feeling. He forgot for the time that he was a prisoner of a hostile tribe, in a desolate, barren region, far from white habitation. The burning sense of the injustice of even the best of us toward the Indian swept him away. He spoke out his convictions, as ardently as ever he had championed the Indian’s soul before those white professors who had come to study them here in the southwest—and had misunderstood.

The Apache’s eyes softened at the youth’s vehemence. “My son seems to comprehend something of us. It’s astonishing—rare, in one of your race! I lived long among the whites—once,” he smiled sardonically. “The massacre of my people at Apache Cave, what think you of that?” he asked.

Sid realized that his attitude toward the whole Indian problem was being tested out by this wily chief; that upon his answer depended his life. Yet he simply replied out of his own convictions, with no thought of how it might affect his fate.

“A pitiable business, chief!” he answered. “Men, women, children, all shot down to the last one! I suppose it had to be, since you would not surrender. The Army had its orders, you know.”

“Orders!” The chief drew himself up proudly. “The Apaches never surrender, to injustice!” he exclaimed. “I am Honanta, son of that Chief Chuntz who fell in that fight, white man!”

Sid glanced up at him, surprised. “I always understood that not one Apache escaped alive from that cave——” he began, wonderingly.

“No! Let me tell you. There was one humane officer among the white soldiers who entered that cave of death, after all was over. He came upon my mother, lying among the heaps of slain. She still lived, shot in three places. She held me, an infant, protectingly hid in her arms. A soldier raised his gun to end her life—a wounded squaw would be a mere nuisance, you know!”—the chief interjected with bitter sarcasm—“but that officer struck up his rifle. He had them take my mother to the ambulances. And, out of the kindness of his heart, that she might not die of starvation, he gave her—this.”

Honanta raised his hand again to the gold piece.

A curious sensation of excitement went through and through Sid. His own father, Colonel Colvin, had been a young second lieutenant of cavalry in that fatal fight of Apache Cave. But he had never mentioned the squaw who had survived, nor the twenty-dollar gold piece; in fact he had always been most reticent about that battle, regarding the whole subject with the most extreme distaste. Sid felt that even if Colonel Colvin were that humane officer, to attempt to establish his own relationship with him and so gain immunity would be regarded by this crafty chief as mere opportunism.

“The officer’s name, did she ever learn it?” he contented himself with asking.

The chief smiled enigmatically. “My son,” said he gently, “to-morrow I shall be able to give that Sun Dance that I vowed to the Great Mystery forty years ago. Is—is your father still living?”

“Yes,” said Sid. “He has a new ranch up in the Gila Cañon country. We came west again, after I settled down to work with your people. The lure of Arizona was always very strong with father. Here was the scene of his early active days; here, in that grand mountain region, he wants to live until his time comes. It’s a great country!”

“Once more, then, before I die, I must leave the Arms of the Great Mystery!” mused Honanta, more to himself than to Sid. Then his whole manner toward the youth changed and he motioned him courteously toward his large grass lodge.

“The Arms of the Great Mystery!” So that was what they called Red Mesa! thought Sid as they walked toward the lodge. Truly, like great protecting arms, those mighty red ramparts rose on each side of this little valley, shielding this lost band of Apache forever against further encroachment. As to the chief’s remark about giving a Sun Dance, it seemed to Sid that he himself appeared to be a vital and necessary part of it. Whether he would be a sacrifice in it or what part he would be called to play in it was a mystery to him. To-morrow he would know, though!

Sid entered the lodge with Honanta, Hano following submissively. He looked about him curiously at the giant hoops of ironwood overhead which formed its arches, at the dense thatch of galleta grass bundles which kept out rain and sun alike. There was little furniture. A red olla, sweating cool water on its porous surface, stood on a three-pronged fork in a corner. A gourd dipper hung beside it and at a motion from the chief Sid drank. There were bundles of cane-and-ironwood arrows which Sid noted were curiously tipped with native copper heads. There were bows strongly backed with bone; parfléche skins for storing dried meat and berries; baskets holding shelled corn. From the rafters hung strings of red peppers and dried corn ears, and loops of dried squash. Shallow baskets held red beans, specked with white dots.

Sid sat down on a roll of skins. Hano, who had entered with them, still remained standing. He seemed to be waiting for something, and Sid noted that the chief had not yet ordered him to be seized and bound. After a time, while the chief was apparently thinking over some further questions, an interruption came—the sound of a woman’s voice crooning softly. She entered the lodge, beautiful as the night. She was clad in soft white buckskin, long-fringed, heavily beaded, and in her arms she bore a tiny bundle from which came soft infantile noises.

Hano’s bronzed face was working in agony of feeling as she entered. Sid and the chief rose respectfully.

“One boon, my father!” burst out Hano hoarsely as the girl hesitated before them, the soft smile of motherhood on her face.

“Which is?” queried the chief turning upon him sternly.

“To perform the whispering ceremony for my newborn son—before I die,” begged Hano brokenly.

Sid’s heart gripped him as he watched the tiny bundle being passed across into the young father’s arms. He hugged his baby close; then pressed his mouth to the little ear that he uncovered. Sid knew that he was whispering the name of the Great Mystery into his son’s ear, the very first word of the human voice that the newborn Indian babe hears. It was an old, old ritual of ancient Indian custom.

Then: “Farewell, little one!” he heard Hano’s anguished tones murmur as he passed the child over to its mother. The girl started back and looked at him astounded, then at Sid, and finally she turned to the chief, her eyes dark pools of questioning.

“It must be, my daughter,” said Honanta. “My son has erred grievously. It is for the old men to decide.”

He blew on a bone battle-whistle which dangled along his thigh like a quirt. At the signal two warriors appeared.

“Take him to the medicine lodge! Bind!” ordered Honanta. He turned his back on Hano and covered his face. A suppressed, hurt sound, like some dumb animal mortally wounded, came from the girl and Sid felt his throat choking. Hano turned once more as they led him away.

“Farewell, Nahla!” his voice rang. “Bring my little son to the stake, that he may see how a warrior can die.”

For a long time there was a dead silence in the lodge. Sid glanced from time to time at the stoical, impassive face of the chief; then at the young wife, who sat huddled in the rounded end of the lodge, her newborn child in her arms and silent tears coursing down her cheeks.

Grief had stricken this lodge—and all because of him. Indian justice was stern, inexorable; on the same exalted plane as its religious conceptions, its four cornerstones of Indian morality—Truth, Honor, Courage, Chastity. For sparing him Hano was to be punished. Was he, too, doomed to take some awful part in to-morrow’s Sun Dance?

Sid knew vaguely of the Sun Dance. In present days it has degenerated among the Plains tribes into a brutal material thing, a degrading exhibition of suffering and endurance of no spiritual meaning whatever. But in the olden times it had been a thank-offering to the Great Mystery, vowed to Him in memory of some special deliverance from peril or certain death. But for the beneficent intervention of the Great Mystery the man had lost his life; therefore all the original symbolism of the Sun Dance was of a potential death and a resurrection by the grace of the Great Mystery. But why should Honanta give this Sun Dance at this late date, forty years after the massacre at Apache Cave? Because some evidence of Honanta’s physical deliverer had come to light, Sid reasoned. That, too, was necessary for the full ceremony to be performed. If Honanta knew that that humane white officer’s name was Colvin, his own part in the ceremony was obvious. What then of Hano? Could he be destined for some heartrending sacrifice on Honanta’s part? It was possible! Sid decided to rescue him, to get him out of Red Mesa and send him to Big John for help, if he would go. He planned, now, to find out where the medicine lodge was and then act when the time was ripe.

Its location was shown him in the most unexpected manner.

“She was a wonderful woman—my mother!” exclaimed Honanta suddenly, breaking his reverie and apparently continuing his narrative as if no interruption had occurred. “She escaped with me from that ambulance by night, for she had no wish to be brought a captive to the reservation that was then being allotted to my people. In the mountains we lived, together. She built a hut of sweet grass. She recovered from her wounds, healing them with plants taught my people by the Great Mystery. She fished and hunted like a man, carrying me always with her on her back. She taught me to love and respect the birds, who live very close to the Great Mystery. As I grew up, she taught me to know the animals, our brothers; to sing chants for their souls when I had to kill them for our needs. She taught me to reverence the bears, who are our mother clan by the First Man. Silence, love, reverence—these were my first lessons in life. Through her I learned to know the Great Mystery. To pray daily to Him after the morning bath, silently, with arms outstretched facing the sun, which is the most sublime of His creations. To seek Him on the high places, alone. To see Him at night, through the glory of the stars.”

Sid listened, waiting respectfully while the chief paused again, sunk in reverie. As an ethnologist he was learning the true inwardness of the Indian’s soul from a red man’s own lips. For some reason Honanta seemed to have laid hold upon his sympathy and he now poured it all out as to the first white man who really comprehended the fundamentals of that marvelous Indian creed now lost to mankind forever.

“As I grew up, our broken-hearted people turned to Christianity. It seemed to us the only thing the white man had which promised mercy and hope,” went on the chief. “I went to a mission school. I learned of Jesus—a man after our own heart! I read the Bible, which, please remember, was written by men of my race, by men of the East—by no one of your blue-eyed, conquering people who now dominate the earth. I saw the white men preaching the Bible with their lips, but their lust for money and power, their eternal buying and selling was always there. I saw that their lives flouted the Bible at every step. I became disgusted. I knew that the teachings of Jesus and our own ancient religion were essentially the same. We used to live those teachings, too, long before the white man came. So I determined to return to our ancient faiths and customs. When I became a man I wandered in all desolate regions, seeking a spot where the white man was not. And I found it. Here, in this forgotten and inaccessible stronghold, which I named ‘The Arms of the Great Mystery,’ for they protect us forever. Here I brought my mother, and as many of her clan as I could find. One by one, they escaped from the reservation and joined me here. These are all that are left of the great Yellow Bear clan of the Apache.”

Again came a silence. Sid felt strangely moved. He was torn between his duty to Scotty, his friend, and his new sympathies for this hunted band of a once free people in this their last refuge. For those copper arrowheads had told him that there was metal here; that Red Mesa really had a mine, as was reported by the Papagoes. His friendship for Scotty prompted him to find this mine and tell him its location once he should escape. Yet, to destroy the peace of this last band of the original red children of our country, to give over their last stronghold to the lust and greed of the white miners who would surely come here—could he do it, even for Scotty’s sake?

“And here my mother died, full of years and honor,” went on the chief. “Come; I will show you!” He led the way out of the lodge. Along the borders of the deep, blue-green waters of the tank a path led to the substantial brush shelter built up in the interior juncture of the two high red walls. Every pole and stick of it had evidently been brought up from the surrounding desert, for no trees grew here, all the available soil having been given over to cultivation. Inside the house Sid saw all the ceremonial objects of the old-time Indian mystery dances, marriage basket trays in intricate designs of black, white, and red on the willow, baptismal bottle baskets made watertight by piñon gum, medicine bundles filled with healing herbs. And, in one particularly sacred shrine, the chief showed him a row of small bundles which Sid knew at once were mortuary relics. They contained the hair and perhaps a few mystic possessions of the dead of the tribe. The first bundle of these was heavily decorated, as if all the women of the band had lavished their art and symbolism in bead work upon it in loving memory.

“My mother’s!” boomed the chief’s deep voice, laying his hand on it.

Sid removed his sombrero and looked reverently. After a time he let his eyes wander around the dim recesses of the room. The chief remained standing, lost in reverie before the reliquary bundle of his mother, but Sid’s eyes searched for and finally found Hano, seated bound against a post in a dim corner under the rocky walls between whose fork the medicine lodge had been built. That there was a concealed opening in this rock somewhere near which led to the cave tunnel up which he had come the youth was sure. He examined the place keenly for an instant, and then turned and stood awaiting the chief’s further pleasure.

“My white son is interested in the ethnology of our poor people? Why, then, does he come down here, around Pinacate, where there are no Indians?” asked the chief as they went out the door.

That was a knock-down poser for Sid to answer without time to think it over! How could he disclose the real object of their trip—mining, the seeking of this very Red Mesa mine? Yet he could not plead ethnology as the purpose of this trip! To lie, to evade, would be impossible before those keen eyes that read truth unerringly. To lie and be caught in his own trap by the wily chief would mean death, under the ancient Indian customs under which this band lived. A murderer, with them, might be pardoned, if he could show sufficient cause, but a liar was always summarily dealt with, for no one in the tribe felt safe with him who spoke with a forked tongue.

“I have a friend,” answered Sid, after a pause in which Honanta stood with his eyes searching his to their depths, “I came with him. His reason for visiting Pinacate is not mine to tell you.”

The chief smiled slightly. “It is good. Friendship of man for man is our highest test of character. He who betrays a friend, even under torture, is unworthy. How many of you are there?”

“Four,” said Sid. “One cowman guide, the white boy who is my friend, a Navaho youth and myself.”

The chief looked relieved. Evidently he did not consider those three out there somewhere in the desert particularly formidable, nor that they could easily find Sid.

“Go, my young brother! You are free of our village. You cannot leave it, for the entrance is well guarded. We shall wait until my old men have spoken.”

Honanta turned and stalked back to his lodge, leaving Sid free to wander at will. The youth at first regretted that he had not told the whole truth about his party, that he had neglected to mention the most important member of it—the dog, Ruler, who would surely track him here just as soon as Big John and Scotty started back to look for him. They would arrive at Red Mesa to-morrow morning, and, guard or no guard, Ruler would lead them to that cave mouth! There was no doubt of his own rescue. But it might mean a fight, might mean anything once Big John arrived on the scene! And for Scotty, with his acute mineralogical knowledge, to get one sight of Red Mesa would mean the end of the Yellow Bear clan’s peaceful days. There were two things for him to do now, Sid decided; to free Hano, and to escape himself—after which he could think out what further steps to take.

Left to himself, Sid strolled around the pond under the high walls of Red Mesa. He looked curiously at the small patches of maize, growing in clumps very much as the Hopi plant them; at the borders of beans and peppers; at squash plants that ran riot up the stone walls, growing out of small crevices of soil in the rock. Every inch of soil was being cultivated. As it was the dry season, great woolly clouds of lavender and rose, empty of rain, were flying across high over the red ramparts in the blue sky. A few squaws were irrigating the higher plants, carrying up large jugs of water from the pond.

A little further on he came to a deep gorge, cleft in the high rock, and Sid stopped, his heart beating swiftly. Here was the mine described on that Red Mesa plaque! It ran like a fissure through the granite, a wide seam of black lava trap, and with it was a vein of rich, dark ore. Pure copper smelted out by the heat of the lava glinted a dull black throughout the vein, and a still intenser black, gleaming with points of white, told of native silver nuggets mixed with the copper. It was a big lode. It swept downward, passed under the dirt path under Cid’s feet and descended into the dim blue depths of the tank. Here was Scotty’s mine, all right!

In it two Apache were working now, making arrow points at a primitive forge up in the shadows of the cleft, blowing a welding heat on a small pot fire with a bellows made of the skins and horns of the mountain sheep. They looked at Sid curiously and one grunted an exclamation in Apache at the other, but neither spoke to him.

Then there was a commotion in the village. A hunter’s song came deep and resonant, from the depths of the medicine lodge. Presently there emerged two stalwart bucks, bearing the carcass of the ram that Sid had seen shot before his eyes that morning. The three arrows that still stuck in his side identified him for Sid. In addition its body was now gayly decorated with prayer sticks and symbolic feathers signifying thankful remembrance to the Great Mystery who had given them this food. All the village turned out rejoicing at the hunters’ song. From the grass huts came squealing children, laughing girls, and lithe young men, all sunburned black as negroes which gave Sid the idea that most of them had been born here. The procession came shouting and rejoicing along the path bordering the pond and then all followed the ram’s carcass into a large lodge down near the open lower end of the valley where evidently the old men of the council were to make the appropriate prayer—“Spirit, partake!” the Indian grace—over the game before dividing it among the band.

Sid watched them depart. It seemed to him that a good time to act had now come. Honanta had not appeared. He was evidently in his lodge or else in a vapor bath hut near the pond preparing himself for his Sun Dance. One of the squaws had left her water jug standing by the brink of the tank, and it gave Sid the solution of a problem that had been troubling him for some time. He shouldered it and then walked swiftly toward the medicine lodge. There was no doubt now that the opening to the cave tunnel came out there, for out of it had just been brought the slain mountain sheep. He got to its door unperceived by any one and walked swiftly to the rear recess, his eyes rapidly accustoming themselves to the gloom within.

“Hano!—Shall I free you?” he asked in Apache, as he groped his way to where the young buck sat bound.

The Indian youth stared. If surprised at Sid’s speaking his own tongue, he gave no sign. Then he shook his head.

“No: I await my father’s judgment,” he replied proudly. “An Apache does not run away.”

“But listen, Hano,” said Sid, earnestly, “my people will surely come! They have a hound dog who can track me here. They will be very angry and there will be a fight. You are few, and my people are armed with revolvers and repeating rifles. There will be many killed, and all for nothing. But you can get by the guard down below. I cannot, without a fight and perhaps killing one of your people. You must go. My horse is tethered over at the foot of the mountain. Give him this water jar for me; he must be crazy with thirst by now. Then ride until you find my people. There are three; a big cowman, a boy like me, and a young Navaho. I think they are at Papago Tanks. Tell them that there is peace, and to come quickly.”

A long wait ensued while Hano considered.

“Besides, Hano—Mexicans are coming. We’ll need white men with rifles if your home is to be defended,” urged Sid, playing his last card.

“My brother speaks wise words,” said Hano at length. “Cut, white boy!—I go!”

Without waiting a moment more Sid drew his hunting knife and freed the young Apache. Then with a delicacy that forbade him to take any advantage of Hano’s escape to find the tunnel entrance, he turned his back and waited. There was a faint rustling; then he turned around to find Hano and the water jar vanished from the lodge.