The Mine with the Iron Door

WITH a merry greeting to Saint Jimmy, Marta ran straight to the welcoming arms of Mother Burton.

“Goodness me, child,” the older woman exclaimed when she had kissed her and held her close for a moment as such mothers do, “you look as if—as if you were going to jump right out of your skin; I do declare!”

And Saint Jimmy, watching them, silently agreed with his mother, thinking that he had never seen the girl quite so animated. Her vivid, flamelike beauty seemed to fill the house with joyous warmth and light, while her laughter, in quick response to Mrs. Burton’s words, rang with such happy abandon, and thrilled with such tingling excitement, that her teacher knew something unusual must have happened.

“What is it?” cried Mother Burton, shaking the girl playfully, and laughing with her. “What is the matter with you? What are you so excited about? Have Thad and Bob struck it rich at last?”

Marta shook her head.

“No, but it is something almost as good. We have a new neighbor.”

Mother Burton looked from Marta to her son inquiringly, as if mildly puzzled to know why the mere arrival of a newcomer in the neighborhood, unusual as it was, should cause such manifestations.

Saint Jimmy, smiling, asked:

“What is his name? Where is he from? And what is he like?”

The girl’s face was glowing with color and her eyes were bright as she answered:

“His name is Hugh Edwards. He came here from Tucson. I didn’t quite understand where he lived before he went to Tucson.” She paused and the ghost of a troubled frown fell across her brow. “But it was somewhere,” she finished brightly.

“Quite likely you are right,” said Jimmy, grave as a judge on the bench.

“Yes,” she continued, “and he has come here to stay. He is awfully poor—poorer than any of us. Why, he hasn’t even a burro to pack his outfit—had to pack it himself on his back, and he has been sick too, but he doesn’t look a bit sick now.” She laughed a little laugh of charming confusion. “He looks as if—as if—oh, as if he could do just anything—you know what I mean.”

“You make it very clear,” murmured Saint Jimmy.

Mother Burton made a curious little noise in her throat.

Marta looked from one to the other suspiciously. Then a bit defiantly she said:

“I don’t care, he does. And he is different from anybody that ever came to the Cañada del Oro before—for that matter, he is different from anybody that I have ever seen anywhere.”

“Dear me,” murmured Mother Burton, “how interesting! But how is he different, dear?”

The girl answered honestly:

“I can’t exactly tell what it is. For one thing, it is easy to see that he is educated. But of course Jimmy is too, so it can’t be that. I am sure, too, that he has lived in a big city somewhere and has known lots of nice people, but so has Jimmy. I don’t know what it is.”

“I judge he is not, then, one of our typical old prospectors,” said Saint Jimmy.

Again the girl’s joyous, unaffected laughter bubbled forth.

“Old! He is no older than you are; I suspect not quite so old, and he has the nicest eyes, almost as nice as you, Jimmy—only, only different, somehow—nice in another way, I mean. And he knows absolutely nothing about prospecting. He is so green it is funny. But he’s going to live in the old Dalton cabin right next door to us and we’re going to teach him.”

“Fine,” said Saint Jimmy with proper enthusiasm, and managed somehow to hide the queer, sinking pain that made itself felt suddenly down deep inside of him. Saint Jimmy was skilled by long practice in hiding pain.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mother Burton. “This is interesting. But I must finish my morning work,” she added, moving toward the kitchen.

“I’ll help,” volunteered Marta quickly, and started after the older woman.

But Mother Burton answered:

“No, no, I was almost finished when you came.” Then catching the girl in her arms impulsively, and looking toward her son whose face was turned again to the far-off horizon, she added in a hurried whisper: “Get him out of doors, dear, he has been sitting like that all this blessed morning—make him go for a walk.”

Marta led her teacher straight to their favorite spot on the mountain side, some distance from the house. Here, in the shade of a gnarled and twisted cedar that for a century or more had looked down upon the varied life that moved through the Cañon of Gold below, they had spent many an hour over the girl’s studies. Against the bole of the tree they had contrived a rude shelf and pegs for hats and wraps. Mrs. Burton had contributed an old kitchen table and two chairs that neither rain nor sun could injure, and there was a large, flat-topped rock that served as bookcase and desk, or for a variety of other purposes, as it might happen.

On this occasion, Marta converted the rock into a couch by throwing herself full length upon it with the unconscious freedom of a schoolboy. Saint Jimmy seated himself in a chair and, in defiance of all schoolmaster propriety, elevated his feet to the table top.

They talked a while, as neighbors will, of the small affairs of the country side. But Doctor Burton could see that Marta’s thoughts were not of the things they were saying; and so, presently, from her rocky couch, the girl spoke again of the stranger who had come to be her nearest neighbor. She described him now in fuller detail—his eyes, his voice, his smile. She contrasted him with the Pardners, the Lizard, and with other men whom she had seen. She imagined fanciful stories for his past and invented for him various wonderful futures. And always she came back to the curious assertion that he was like her teacher, only different.

And Saint Jimmy, as he listened, asked an occasional encouraging question and studied her as in his old professional days he might have studied a patient. Never before had he seen the girl in such a mood. It was as if something deep-buried in her inner self was striving to break its way through to the surface of her being, as a deep-buried seed, when its time comes, forces its way through the dark earth to the light and sun.

Then for some time the girl was silent. With her head pillowed on one arm, and her eyes half closed, she lay as if she had drifted with the currents of her wandering thoughts into the quietude of dreams—dreams that were as intangible, yet as real, as the blue haze and purple shadows through which she saw the distant desert and mountains.

And Saint Jimmy, too, was still; while his face was turned away toward the far-off horizon, as if he saw there things which he might not talk about.

On the pine-clad heights of Mount Lemmon there were a few scattered patches of snow that had not yet yielded to the spring; but the air was soft and fragrant with the perfumes of warm earth and growing plants and opening blossoms. There was the low hum of the bees that were mining in the fragrant cat-claw bushes for the gold they stored in their wild treasure-houses in the cliffs. Not far away a gambrel partridge gallantly assured his plump gray mate, who sat on the nest in the shelter of a tall mescal plant, that there was no danger. A Sonora pigeon, from the top of a lone sahuaro, called his soft, deep-throated mating call. And a vermilion flycatcher sprang into the air from his perch near-by and climbed higher and higher into the blue and then, after holding himself aloft for a moment, puffed out his red feathers, and, twittering in a mad love ecstasy, came drifting back like a brilliant-colored thistle bloom, or an oversized and fiery-tinted dandelion tuft.

Marta’s teacher had not forgotten that the Pardners had trusted him to tell their girl the things that they—Saint Jimmy and his mother—were agreed she should know. And Saint Jimmy meant to tell her. But somehow this did not seem to be the time. He stole a look at the girl lying on the rocks. No, this was not the time. He could not tell her just now. He would wait. Some other time, perhaps, it would be easier.

“Jimmy,” said the girl at last, and her words came slowly as if she spoke out of the haze of her dreams, “when you went to school—I don’t mean when you were just a little boy, but when you were almost a man—was it a big school?”

Saint Jimmy did not answer at once, then, without taking his eyes from what ever it was that he was looking at in the distance, he said:

“Why, yes, it was a fairly large school.”

“And were there both men and women students?”

“Yes, there were a good many women in the University, and a few in the medical school, where I finally finished.”

“I expect you had lots of friends, didn’t you, Jimmy? I should think you would—men and women friends both. And I suppose there were all kinds of good times—parties and dances and picnics.”

Doctor Burton turned suddenly to look at her. “What in the world are you driving at now?”

“Please, Jimmy,” she said wistfully, “I want to know.”

And something made him look away again.

“I suppose I had my share of friends,” he answered. “And there was a reasonable amount of fun, as there always is at school, you know. But we—most of us—worked hard, too.”

“Yes,” she returned quickly, “and you dreamed and planned the great things you would do in the world when your school days should be over, and, in spite of all your friends and the good times, you could hardly wait to begin—yes, I am sure that is the way it would be.”

Saint Jimmy did not speak.

“And when your school days were finished, and you were actually a doctor in a big city, you still had lots of men and women friends, and you found a little time, now and then, for parties and—and dinners and such things, didn’t you, Jimmy?”

Saint Jimmy smiled, a patient, shadowy smile as he answered:

“My practice at first certainly left me plenty of time for other things.”

The girl did not notice the smile, because she was not looking at her companion.

“You lived in a nice house, too, with books and pictures and—and carpets on the floors. Do you know, I think I have wanted more than anything else in the world to live in a house with carpets on the floors. That is, I mean, I have wanted it ever since I knew there were such things. Do you know, Jimmy, I never saw a house with carpets until that first day I came to see you and Mother Burton?”

She laughed a little.

“That was a long, long time ago, wasn’t it? And I couldn’t much more than read then. Gee! how scared I was of you and Mother Burton.”

“You have made wonderful progress in your studies and in every way,” said Jimmy, proudly.

“Yes,” she returned. “The carpets did it—the carpets and you and Mother Burton. I don’t see how you ever managed to teach me, though. I guess you just learned by doctoring so many sick people. It must be a wonderful, satisfying work—helping people, I mean, like a doctor, or a teacher, or any work like that. It’s not like just finding gold in the ground. Even though you do have to work so hard to get the gold, it’s not like—like working for people—or with people. Getting gold out of the ground seems to take you away from people. You don’t seem to be doing anything for anybody—but only just for yourself. Prospectors and workers like that ’most always live alone, I have noticed. I don’t think many of them are very happy either. I have seen quite a lot of prospectors in my time, you know, Jimmy. In fact, except for you, prospectors and that sort are the only kind of men I have ever known—until now.”

Saint Jimmy was watching her closely.

“Yes,” he said softly, as if he did not wish to disturb her mood.

“I suspect it was pretty hard, wasn’t it, Jimmy, when you got sick yourself and had to give up your work and all your plans and leave your nice home and all your friends and everything and come away out here to get well, and then to find that you never could go back but must stay here always—poor Jimmy! It must have been mighty hard.”

“It wasn’t exactly easy,” he said slowly, “not at first. I fought a good deal until I learned better. After that it was not so hard—only at times, perhaps. Even now, I rebel occasionally, but not for long.”

Which was as near a complaint as any one had ever heard from Doctor Jimmy Burton.

“Jimmy,” said Marta earnestly, “I think that you are the most wonderful man that ever was—that ever could be.”

Saint Jimmy shrugged his shoulders, and waved a protesting hand.

“But you are,” she insisted, “and you know how I love you, don’t you? Not merely because you have helped me as you have, but because you are you. You do know, don’t you, Jimmy?”

There was an odd note in Jimmy’s voice now—it might have been gladness—it might have been protest—or perhaps it was both—with a hint of pain.

“Marta! I——“

He stopped as if he found himself suddenly unable to finish whatever it was that he had started to say. It may be that this was one of the times when Saint Jimmy was not wholly reconciled to the part that life had assigned to him.

Apparently Marta did not notice her teacher’s manner. Her thoughts must have been centered elsewhere because she said, quite as if she had been considering it all the time:

“I feel sure that Mr. Edwards has been hurt some way, just as you have, Jimmy. I mean that he has been to school, and had a world of nice friends and good times, and then started his real work and all that, and, now for some reason, has had to give up his work and home and friends and everything, and come out here. He didn’t tell us much, but you could sort of feel that he was that kind of a man. You can feel those things about men, can’t you, Jimmy?”

Jimmy nodded:

“I suppose so.”

“I don’t know why he didn’t tell us more about himself—about before he came to Tucson, I mean. Perhaps he will some day; but he acts as if he didn’t like to think about it now. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know.”

“It is rather important that one have a past, isn’t it, Jimmy?” She smiled as she added: “Rather important that one have the right kind of a past, I mean.”

“To my mind it is quite important,” answered Jimmy soberly. And suddenly he remembered again the story that the Pardners had told.

She nodded thoughtfully.

“You have talked to me a lot about heredity and breeding and good blood and early environment and those things. I suspect it is your being a doctor that makes you consider them as you do. And Mother Burton, she has told me a lot, too, about your ancestors, away back. And so I can see that it is your past and the things you have to remember that make you the kind of a man you are. If you didn’t have the father and mother that you had, and the fathers and mothers that they had, and if you hadn’t had the schools and the friends and the home with carpets and the work of helping people that you have had, why, you wouldn’t be you at all, would you, Jimmy?”

Saint Jimmy moved uneasily. He wished now, in the light of the Pardners’ story and their conclusion as to the birth and parentage of this girl, that he had not included some subjects in his pupil’s course of study.

Marta continued as if, scarcely conscious of her companion’s presence, she were thinking aloud.

“And so if—if any one else did have the same kind of things to remember that you have, he would be the same kind of a man that you are—not exactly, of course. He might not be a doctor, or might not be sick, but on the whole—well—you see what I mean, don’t you, Jimmy?”

Saint Jimmy was quite sure that he saw her meaning. In fact, Doctor Burton was fast being convinced that he realized, more clearly than Marta herself, the real meaning of her unusual mood. Her next words confirmed his fast-growing suspicion that, however scientifically right he had been in his teaching, he had not been altogether kind in stressing certain truths.

“It’s funny that I never really thought of it before,” she said, “but I don’t seem to have any past at all. All I can remember is just moving around with my two fathers, who, of course, are not my fathers at all—at least not both of them. And, if it were not for you and Mother Burton, we wouldn’t have stayed here any longer than we did the other places. I think I must have been born while my real father and mother were moving somewhere. I never cared much about it before, Jimmy, but somehow I wish—now—that I—that I knew who I am. I wish—I wish—I had things to remember—such as you and Mr. Edwards have—schools and friends and good times and a home with carpets—I mean.”

There was a suspicious brightness in the frank eyes and her lips were trembling a little; a state of affairs very unusual to the Pardners’ daughter.

Saint Jimmy realized that it was going to be even harder than he had foreseen to make known to this girl the things he had promised to tell her. Certainly he could not tell her just now.

His voice was gentle as he finally said:

“I wouldn’t worry about all that, if I were you, dear. You see, it doesn’t really matter so much whether you know or not—your people must have been the best kind of people because you are what you are, and after all, it is what you are right now that counts. It is your own dear self, and not what you might have been that matters, don’t you see? Why, you have a better education already than most girls of your age. As for the rest—the friends and all that—those will come in time, I am sure.”

She smiled her gratitude bravely, then:

“Jimmy, may I ask you something more—something real personal?”

“As personal as you like,” he answered gravely.

“Well, among all your friends at school, and among all the people you met and knew afterwards, was there ever—was there ever one who was more than all the others—one girl or woman, I mean?”

Jimmy considered, then deliberately:

“You mean, in my school days and before I was forced to give up my work?”

She nodded.

“No,” said Jimmy readily. “Once or twice I thought there might be, but I soon found out that I was mistaken—of course I am glad now that I found it out.”

“But didn’t you, in all of your plans and dreams for your life and work—didn’t you ever include some one, didn’t you ever plan for a—for—well, for”—she finished triumphantly—“for two little boys like the Wheelers have?”

“I looked forward in a general way to a home and children, as I think every man does,” he answered.

She caught him up eagerly:

“You really think that every man includes such things in his plans?”

“At least,” he replied, “I fail to see how any normal, right-thinking man can ignore such things in his life plans.”

“I wonder if that could be it?” said Marta.

“You wonder what?”

“If Mr. Edwards came to the Cañada del Oro because his plans included some one who refused to be included.”

“Good Lord!” ejaculated Saint Jimmy under his breath.

“No,” she continued, “I don’t believe that is it. He doesn’t act as though that was the reason.”

Suddenly her mood changed. She seemed to awaken to some hitherto unrealized possibilities of her life, and to grasp with startled fierceness a defiant truth.

“Jimmy,” she cried, “just because I have no past is no reason why I should not have a future, is it?”

Before he could find an answer she went on, and her words came rushing, tumbling, hurrying out, as if the floodgate of her emotions were suddenly lifted and the passionate spirit of her released.

“I can see now that I have always been like our cañon creek in summer, just playing along any old way, taking things as they are, without even caring whether I stopped or not, but now—now I feel like the creek is to-day, with its springtime life, boiling and roaring and leaping—I won’t—I won’t be like the creek though—that for all its strength and fuss and fury just fades away at last into nothing, out there in the desert. I want to keep on going and going and going—I don’t know where. I don’t care where, just on, and on, and on!”

She sprang to her feet and stood before him in all the radiant, vigorous beauty of her young womanhood, and with reckless abandon challenged:

“Jimmy, let’s run away. Let’s go away off somewhere beyond the farthest line yonder that you are always looking at; and then let’s keep on going, just you and I. Wouldn’t it be fun if we were to be married? Why shouldn’t we? You’re not too old—I’m not too young. We could live in a little house somewhere—a house with carpets, Jimmy—and books and pictures, and you could make music, and I would take care of you—Oh, such good care of you, Jimmy. I’d cook all the things you like and ought to eat, and wash for you, and mend your things, and you could go on teaching me, and scolding me when I forgot to use the right words, and—and—wouldn’t it be fun, Jimmy? Of course after a while Mother Burton would come too—and perhaps there would be a place somewhere near for my daddies to prospect—Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, let’s go!”

Doctor Burton laughed, and it was well for the girl that she was still too much of a child to know how often grim tragedy wears a mask of mirth.

When the stranger had told the Pardners and their daughter his simple story—how he had been ill and could find no work in Tucson, and so had come to the Cañada del Oro with the hope of finding enough gold to live by, and Marta had ridden away to spend the Sunday with Saint Jimmy and Mother Burton, Thad said doubtfully:

“I don’t see as there’s much we can do. We can’t learn nobody to find gold whar it ain’t, an’ if we knowed whar it was we certain sure would stake out some claims for ourselves, wouldn’t we? I don’t take no stock in there bein’ anythin’ more than a color mebby, round that old Dalton cabin yonder.”

“Gold is where you find it,” remarked Bob cheerfully. “You can’t never tell when or where you’re going to strike it rich.”

“That’s all right,” retorted Thad. “But it stands to reason that if the feller what built that cabin hadn’t of worked out his claim, he’d be there workin’ on it yet, wouldn’t he? He quit and vamoosed because he’d worked it out, I’m tellin’ you.”

Bob returned with energy:

“And I’m maintainin’ that no claim or mine or nothin’ else was ever worked out. Folks jest quit workin’ on ’em, that’s all. There’s many and many a mine been abandoned when three hours more—or one more shot, mebby, would a-opened up a bonanza. This young man may go right up there in the creek and stick in his pick a foot from where the other feller took out his last shovel of dirt an’ turn up a reg’lar glory-hole. Don’t you let him give you the dumps, Mr. Edwards, he’s the worst old pessimist you ever see. There’s enough gold in this neighborhood to buy all the bacon an’ beans you’ll need, long as you live, if you’re willin’ to scratch around for it; an’ you’ve got jest as good a chance as there is to strike a real mine an’ make your everlastin’ fortune, too.”

“If you want my honest opinion, Mr. Edwards,” said Thad solemnly, as if his pardner had not spoken, “you’ll be a fool to spend any time here.”

The younger man smiled:

“But you see, Mr. Grove, I am rather forced to do something right now. As I told you, I’m not in a position to spend much time tramping about the country looking for what might be a better place. All my capital—all my worldly possessions, in fact—are in that pack there. After all, you know the old saying,” he finished laughingly, “‘It takes a fool for luck.’”

“That ain’t so,” growled Thad, “’cause if it was, my pardner there would be as rich as Rockefeller and Morgan an’ the rest of them billionaires all rolled into one.”

Bob grinned at Edwards reassuringly. Then he said to Thad:

“Now that you’ve got that off your mind, suppose we jest turn in an’ do what we can for the boy here.”

“This here’s Sunday, ain’t it?” returned Thad, doubtfully. “Didn’t my gal tell us yesterday that we couldn’t——“

“Your gal,” interrupted Bob, fiercely. “Your gal—huh. I’m here to tell you that you’d best keep within your rights, Thad Grove, even if me an’ you be pardners. She’s my gal this week beginnin’ at sun-up this mornin’, an’ you know it; an’ besides, there’s good scripture for us helpin’ Mr. Edwards here to get located, even if ’tis Sunday.”

“Scripture!” said Thad scornfully. “What scripture?”

“It’s that there part where the Lord is linin’ ’em up about what they did an’ what they didn’t do,” explained Bob. “Says He to one bunch, ‘When I was dead broke an’ hungry an’ thirsty an’ all but petered out, you ornary skunks wouldn’t turn a hand to give me a lift, an’ so you don’t need to figger that you’re goin’ to git in on the ground floor with me now that I’ve struck pay dirt’—or words to that effect. An’ then to the other bunch He says: ‘You’re all right, Pardners; come on in an’ make your pile along with me, ’cause I ain’t forgot how when I was a stranger you took me in. You grubstaked me when I was down and out, an’ for that, all I’ve got now is yourn’—leastways, that’s the general meanin’ of it.”

Whereupon Thad conceded that while it would be wrong actually to work on the day of rest, it might be safe for them to show the stranger around and sort of talk things over.

And all that day, while the two old prospectors were conducting him to the cabin that, for the following months, was to be his home, while they were showing him about the neighborhood and advising him in a general way about his work, and as they sat at the dinner which Marta had left prepared for them, Hugh Edwards felt that he was being weighed, measured, analyzed. Nor did he in any way attempt to avoid or shirk the ordeal. Fairly and squarely, with neither hesitation nor evasion, he met those keen old eyes that for so many years had searched for the precious metal that is hidden in the sands and rocks and gravel of desert wastes, and lonely cañons, and those mountain places that are far remote from the haunts of less hardy and courageous men.

They did not ask many questions about his past, for it is not the way of such men to pry into another’s past. By their code a man’s personal history is his own most private affair, to be given or withheld as he himself elects. But what a man is, that is a matter of concern to every one who is called by circumstance to associate with him. They were not particularly interested in what this man who had given his name as Hugh Edwards had been. They were mightily interested in discerning what sort of a man Hugh Edwards, at that moment, was.

“Well, Pardner,” said Bob, later in the afternoon when Edwards, with sincere expression of his gratitude, had left them to go to the cabin which by common consent they now called his, “what do you make of him?”

Old Thad, rubbing his bald head, answered in—for him—an unusual vein:

“He’s a right likable chap, ain’t he, Bob? If I’d ever had a boy of my own—that is, supposin’, first, I’d ever had a wife—I think I’d like him to be jest about what I sense this lad is.” Then, as if alarmed at this betrayal of what might be considered sentiment, the old prospector suddenly stiffened, and added in his usual manner: “You can’t tell what he is—some sort of a sneakin’ coyote, like as not, a-tryin’ to pass hisself off as a harmless little cottontail. I’m for layin’ low an’ watchin’ his smoke mighty careful.”

“He’ll assay purty high-grade ore, I’m a-thinkin’,” said Bob.

“Time enough to invest when said assay has been made,” retorted Thad. “It looks funny to me that a man of his eddication would be a-comin’ up here in this old cañon to waste his time tryin’ to do somethin’ that he don’t know no more about than a baby. Hard work, too; an’ anybody can see he ain’t never done much of that.”

“He’s been sick,” returned Bob.

Thad grunted:

“Huh! If he was, it was a long time ago. Did you notice the weight of that pack—He’s a totin’ it like it warn’t nothin’ at all.”

“He looks kind of pale when his hat is off,” said Bob.

To which Thad returned:

“He’s mighty perticler about where he was an’ what he was doin’ for a livin’ before he blew into Tucson.”

“As for that,” returned Bob, “there’s been some things happen since me an’ you was first pardners that we ain’t jest exactly a-wavin’ in the wind—an’ look at us now.”

Thad’s dry retort was inevitable:

“Yes, jest look at us!”

Bob chuckled.

“You ain’t so mighty much to look at, I admit.”

“Well,” said Thad, “as long as my gal thinks I’m all right, you——“

“My gal—my gal,” snapped Bob. “Why have you allus got to be a-tryin’ to do me out of my rights. You know well as I do this is my week.”

“Excuse me, Pard,” the other apologized in all seriousness. “And that leads me to remark that your gal didn’t appear altogether indifferent an’ uninterested in this young prospectin’ neighbor of ours. You took notice, too, I reckon.”

“I ain’t blind, be I?” answered Bob. “An’ why wouldn’t she take notice? My gal ain’t no wizened-up old mummy like me an’ you. Why wouldn’t she take notice of a fine, up-standin’ clean-eyed, straight-limbed, fair-spoken youngster like him, heh? It’s nateral enough—an’ right enough too, I reckon.”

Old Thad, with sudden rage, shook his long finger at his pardner and, in a voice that was high pitched and trembling with emotion, cried:

“Nateral enough, you poor old, thick-headed, ossified, wreck of manhood, you. Nateral enough! Holy Cats! It’s too nateral, that’s what I’m a meanin’, it’s too nateral—whether it’s all right or all wrong—it’s too almighty nateral—that’s what it is.”

Later, when Marta had returned to her home in the Cañon of Gold—when the sun was down and the shadow of the approaching night was deepening over desert and mesa and mountain—a cowboy on his way to the home ranch stopped to listen as the music of Saint Jimmy’s flute came soft and clear through the quiet of the evening, from that spot beneath the old cedar tree, high on the mountain side. A wandering Mexican, camped near Juniper Spring below, heard and crossed himself. Natachee the Indian who was following a faint trail toward the wild upper cañon heard and smiled. Jimmy’s mother heard, and her eyes filled with tears.

CHAPTER IX

“GOLD IS WHERE YOU FIND IT”

When the younger man had produced those implements which were so new and strange to him, Bob asked kindly if he had had a good night’s sleep, if he found the cabin comfortable, and if he had fortified himself for the day’s work with a proper breakfast.

Hugh Edwards laughed, and, with his face lifted to the mountain heights that towered above them, squared his shoulders and drew a long deep breath.

“I haven’t had such a sleep since I can remember. As for breakfast, well, if I eat like this every day, I will exhaust my supplies before I even learn to know gold when I see it. I feel as if I could move that hill over there into the cañon.”

Bob chuckled.

“You’ll find you’ve got to move a lot of it, son, before you make enough at this gold-huntin’ game to buy your grub.”

“That’s the trouble with prospectin’ in this here Cañada del Oro country,” said Thad. “The harder you work the more you eat, and the more you eat the harder you got to work. Come on, let’s get a-goin’.”

For several hours the old Pardners labored with their pupil beside the creek, then, with hearty assurance of further help from time to time as he made progress, they left him and went to their own little mine, some five hundred yards down the cañon.

The afternoon was nearly gone when Edwards, who was kneeling over the gravel and sand in his pan at the edge of the stream, looked up.

On a bowlder, not more than five steps from the amateur prospector, sat an Indian.

With an exclamation, the white man sprang to his feet.

The Indian did not move. Dressed as he was in the wild fashion of his fathers and with his primitive bow and arrows, he seemed more like some sculptured bit of the past than a creature of living flesh.

Hugh Edwards, standing as one ready to run at the crack of the starter’s pistol, swiftly surveyed the immediate vicinity. His face was white and he was trembling with fear.

With grave interest the red man silently observed the perturbed stranger. Then, as Edwards again turned his frightened eyes toward him, the Indian raised his hand in the old-time peace sign and in a deep, musical voice spoke the one word of the old-time greeting:

“How.”

Edwards broke into a short, nervous laugh.

“How-do-you-do—By George! but you gave me a start.”

Some small animal—a pack rat or a ground squirrel—made a rustling sound in the bushes on the bank above, and with a low cry the frightened man wheeled, and again started as if to escape.

The Indian, watching, saw the meaning in every move the stranger made, and read every expression of his face.

With an effort Edwards controlled himself.

“Are you alone?” he asked. “I mean”—he caught himself up quickly—“that is—have you no horse?”

“I am always alone,” the Indian answered calmly. Then, as if to put the other more at ease, he continued in excellent English: “Night before last, when the sun went down, I was up there on Samaniego Ridge,” he pointed with singular grace. “There on that rock near the dead sahuaro, and I saw you as you came up the old road into the cañon.”

Hugh Edwards again betrayed himself by the eagerness of his next question:

“Did you see any one else?”

“There was no one on your trail,” returned the Indian.

At this the stranger seemed to realize suddenly that he was permitting his fears to reveal too much, and, as one will, he sought to amend his error with a half-laughing excuse.

“Really, you know, I didn’t suppose there was any one following me.” He indicated his work with a gesture. “I am not exactly used to this sort of life, you see, and—well—I confess the loneliness, the strangeness of my surroundings, and all, have rather got on my nerves—quite natural, I suppose.”

The Indian bowed assent.

As if determined to correct any impression he might have made by his unguarded manner, Edwards abruptly dropped the subject, and with an air of enthusiastic delight spoke of his surroundings, finishing with the courteous question:

“You live in this neighborhood, do you?”

There was a quick gleam of savage light in the dark eyes that were fixed with bold pride upon the questioning white man, and the Indian answered more in the manner of his people:

“In the years that are past my fathers came to these mountains to hunt and to make war like men. They come now with the squaws to gather acorns, when the white man gives them permission. I live here, yes, as a homeless dog lives in one of your cities. My name is Natachee.”

The deep, musical voice of the red man revealed such bitter feeling that Hugh Edwards was moved to pity. And then, as he stood there in the silence that had fallen upon them, a strange thing happened. It was as if the spirit of the Indian had somehow touched the inner self of the stranger and had quickened in him a kindred savage lusting for revenge upon some enemy who had brought upon him, too, humiliation and shame and suffering beyond expression. The white man’s hands were clenched, his breast heaved with labored breathing, his face was black with passion, his eyes were dreadful with the scowling light of anger and hate.

A faint smile came like a swift shadow over the face of the watching Indian; then he spoke with deliberate meaning:

“And why have you come to the Cañada del Oro? Why should a man like you wish to live here, in the Cañon of Gold?”

Hugh Edwards gained control of himself with an effort.

“I came to look for gold; as you see,” he said at last.

Again that faint smile like a quick shadow touched the face of the red man.

And this time the other saw it. Looking straight into the eyes of the Indian, he said coldly:

“And you, what do you do for a living?”

Natachee, returning look for look, answered simply:

“I live as my fathers lived.”

“I have heard about you, I think,” said Edwards.

The Indian’s deep voice was charged with scorn.

“Yes, the Lizard called at your camp—you would hear about every one from the Lizard.”

“He told me that you were educated.”

Natachee answered sadly:

“It is true, I attended the white man’s school. What I learned there made me return to the desert and the mountains to live as my fathers lived; and to die as my people must die.”

When the white man, seemingly, could find no words with which to reply, the Indian spoke again.

“If it is gold that brought you here to the Cañada del Oro, why do you not search for the Lost Mine with the Iron Door?”

Hugh Edwards, remembering what the Lizard had said, smiled.

“And is there, really, such a mine?”

“There is a story of such a mine.”

“Do many people come to look for it?”

Natachee answered gravely and with that dignity so characteristic of a red man, while his words, though spoken in English, were the words of an Indian:

“Too many people come. As the ocean calls the water of the rivers, and the rivers call the creeks and springs; so this story of a treasure hidden in a mine that is lost has called many people to the Cañon of Gold. For many years they have been coming—for many years they will continue to come. The white people say they do not believe there ever was such a mine and they laugh about it. They look for it just the same. Even the Pardners, who dig for gold in their own little hole down there, laugh, but I know that they, too, believe even as they laugh. That is always the white man’s way—always he is searching for the thing which he says does not exist, and at which he laughs.”

“But what about you?” asked Hugh Edwards. “Do you believe in this lost mine?”

The Indian’s face was a bronze mask as he answered:

“Of what importance is an Indian’s belief to a white man? When the winds heed the dead leaves they toss and scatter, when the fire heeds the dry grass in its path, then will a white man heed the words of an Indian.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say it was as bad as that,” returned Edwards easily, and as he spoke he went to bend over his pan again. “Mine or no mine,” he continued, as he examined the sand and gravel he had been washing, “I think I have some real gold here.”

When there was no answer he said:

“You must know gold when you see it. Will you look at this and tell me what you think?”

Still there was no answer.

With the gold pan in his hand, the white man turned to face his visitor. The Indian had disappeared.

In amazement, Hugh Edwards stood staring at the spot where the Indian had been sitting but a moment before. Then, while his eyes searched the vicinity for some movement in the brush, he listened for a sound. Not a leaf or twig or blossom stirred—not a sound betrayed the way the red man had gone.

With an odd feeling that the whole incident of the Indian’s visit was as unreal as a dream, the man had again turned his attention to the contents of his gold pan when a gay voice came from the top of the bank.

“Well, neighbor, have you struck it rich?”

Looking up, he saw Marta.

“I have struck something all right, or rather something struck me,” he laughed, as she joined him beside the creek. Then he told her about the Indian.

“Yes,” she said, “that was Natachee. He always comes and goes like that. Everybody says he is harmless. He and Saint Jimmy are quite good friends; but he gives me the creeps.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Ugh! I always feel as if he were wishing that he could scalp every one of us.”

“To tell the truth,” returned Edwards, “I feel a little that way myself.”

That evening as Hugh Edwards sat with the Pardners and their girl on the porch, he asked the old prospectors about the Mine with the Iron Door.

They laughed, as Natachee had said, but Edwards caught an odd note of wistfulness in their merriment. Thad answered his question, with a brave pretense of scorn:

“There’s lost mines all over Arizona, son. Better stick to your pick and shovel if you want to eat reg’lar. You won’t pan out so mighty much, mebby, but what you do get will be real.”

“But this here Mine with the Iron Door is different some ways from all them others,” said Bob.

And again Edwards caught that wistful note in the old-timer’s voice.

“You mean that you believe there is such a mine?” he said.

“Holy Cats—No!” growled Thad. “We don’t believe in nothin’ ’til we got it where we can cash it in.”

Bob was thoughtfully refilling his pipe. “They say it was made by the old padres, away back, a hundred years before any of us prospectors ever hit this country. I know one thing that you can see for yourself, easy—there’s the ruins of a mighty old settlement or camp or somethin’ on the side of the mountain up above the Steam Pump Ranch. They say it was there that the Papagos, what worked the mine for the priests, lived. The Papagos and the padres always was friendly, you know. The padres have got a big mission, San Xavier, down in the Papago country, right now—built somethin’ like three hundred years ago, it was. I ain’t never been able myself to jest figger their idea in fixin’ up the mine with that iron door. Mebby it was on account of them only workin’ it by spells, like when they was needin’ somethin’ extra for their mission or for their church back home in Spain, where they all come from, and so wanted to shut it up when they was gone away. Then one time, the story goes, along come one of these here earthquakes, and tumbled a whole blamed mountain down on top of the works. The old priests and their Papago miners figgered it out that the landslide was an act of God—Him bein’ displeased with the way they was runnin’ things er somethin’, an’ so they was scared ever even to try to dig her up again. An’ so you see, after all these years, the trees and brush growed over the mountain again and the old mine got to be plumb lost for certain sure.”

“An’ so far as we’re consarned,” added the other pardner emphatically, “it’s goin’ to stay lost. This ain’t no country for a big mine nohow. Mineralized all right, but look at the way she’s all shot to pieces; busted forty ways for Sunday—ain’t nothin’ reg’lar nowhere, unless you was to go down a thousand or two feet, mebby, and that ain’t no prospect for a poor man, I’m a-tellin’ you. Find a little placer dirt, yes, and you might strike a good pocket once in a lifetime or so, but that ain’t to say real minin’. Take my advice, son, and don’t let this lost mine get to workin’ on you or you’ll go hungry.”

“That’s all true enough, Pardner,” said Bob, “but you know how ’tis, you can’t never tell—Gold is where you find it.”

CHAPTER X

SUMMER