The Mine with the Iron Door

DOCTOR JIMMY BURTON and his mother spent their first year in Arizona at Tucson and Oracle. But when they were satisfied that Jimmy could live if he gave up his too strenuous professional work and remained in the Southwest, and that if he did not follow that course he would as surely die, they built the little white house on the mountain side at Juniper Springs, above the Cañada del Oro. As Jimmy explained, “it was quite necessary, under the circumstances, that they live where they could see out.”

It was during that first summer in Oracle that the neighbors began to speak of his tender care of his mother, for, even in those days when he was too ill to do more than think, his thoughts were all for her. And so lovingly did he try to shield her from the pain of his suffering, so cheerfully did he accustom her to the thought of the utter hopelessness of his professional future, and so courageously, for her sake, did he accept the pitifully small portion that life offered him, that the people marveled at the spirit of the man. It was a question, they sometimes said, with a touch of sincere reverence in their voices, if Doctor Burton needed his mother as much as the doctor’s mother needed him. But Jimmy and his mother knew that the truth of the matter was they needed each other.

And so in their mutual need both mother and son found compensation for their dreams that now could never come true. In place of the professional honors that were predicted with such confidence for her boy, and toward which she had looked with such pride, the mother saw her son honored by the love of the unpretentious country folk. From plans that had failed and hopes that were buried, Jimmy himself turned to the grandeur of the mountains and the beauty of tree and bush and flower—to the limitless spaces of the desert and the peace of the quiet stars. The life of the great eastern city, with its hunger for fame, its struggle for riches, its endless tumult and its restless longings, faded farther and farther away. The simple, more primitive, more peaceful life of God’s great unimproved world became every day more satisfying.

To the roaming cowboys and miners and their kind, and to the people of the little mountain village, that tiny white house on the hill was known. And many a man, when things were going wrong, came to spend an hour with this friend whose understanding was so clear and whose counsel was so true. Many a girl or woman in need of comfort, strength or courage came to sit a while with Mrs. Burton. And sometimes a tired rider of the range would hear in the twilight dusk the clear, sweet song of Jimmy’s flute and, hearing, would smile and lift his wide-brimmed hat; or perhaps a lonely prospector, camped for the night in some gulch or wash would hear, and, hearing, would think again of things that in his search for gold he had forgotten. And this is how Doctor James Burton became Saint Jimmy and Saint Jimmy’s mother became Mother Burton to them all.

It was natural that the good doctor should become Marta Hillgrove’s teacher, and that Mrs. Burton should mother the girl who, until her fathers brought her to the Cañada del Oro, had never known a woman’s guiding love. Indeed, it was Saint Jimmy and his mother and all that their friendship meant to Marta that had kept the Pardners in that neighborhood. Never before since the beginning of their partnership had those wanderers stayed so long in one place. For four—nearly five—years Marta had been studying under Saint Jimmy; a fair equivalent of the usual college course. With this textbook education she had received from Mother Burton the kind of training that such a woman would have given a daughter of her own. And yet these most excellent teachers knew no more of their pupil’s history than did those thoughtless ones who so freely discussed the girl and looked at her askance for what they thought her parentage might be.

It should be said, too, that this schooling which Marta had received from Saint Jimmy and his mother was wholly a matter of love. As Doctor Burton explained to the Pardners, when they insisted that he should be paid “same as a reg’lar teacher,” the work was really a blessing to him in that his pupil contributed more to his life than he could possibly give to hers; while Mother Burton warned the anxious fathers, gently but firmly, that if they ever said another word about pay they would ruin everything.

But as the years passed and she watched the amazing development of the girl’s mind, and saw the unfolding of her richly endowed womanhood, wise Mother Burton came to wonder sometimes if Saint Jimmy’s teaching was not more a matter of love than even he perhaps realized.

On that spring morning when Marta rode to Oracle and her fathers discussed the problem that so troubled them, Saint Jimmy sat in the yard before the cottage door. On every side he saw the Mariposa tulips lifting their lovely orange cups, and sweet pea blossoms swinging like pink and white fairies above a lilac carpet of wild verbena and purple fragrant hyptis, while against the rocks that were stained with splashes of gray and orange and red and yellow lichens stood the purple pentstemon. The mountain sides below were wondrous with the scarlet glory of the ocotillo and the indescribable beauty of the chollas and opuntias with their crowns and diadems of red and salmon and orange and pink. The slopes and benches of the lower levels were bright with great fields of golden brittle-bush; and beyond these, on the wide spaces of the mesa, he could see the yuccas (our Lord’s candles) in countless thousands, raising their stately shafts with eight-foot clusters of creamy-white bloom.

Mrs. Burton, leaving her housework for a moment, came to stand in the doorway. When they had spoken of the beautiful sight that never failed to move them—calling each other’s attention to different favorite views—Saint Jimmy said:

“Mother, doesn’t it all make you sort of hungry for something—something that can’t be told in words?” he laughed in boyish embarrassment.

His mother smiled.

“Marta will be coming from Oracle with the mail, I suppose—this is Saturday, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Jimmy softly, and wondered if his mother guessed what it really was that he hungered for and could not talk about even to her.

Mrs. Burton was turning back into the house when they heard some one coming up the trail from the cañon. A moment later the Pardners appeared. Saint Jimmy and his mother knew at once that the old prospectors had come on business of greater moment than to make a mere neighborly call.

When they had exchanged the customary greetings and Marta’s fathers had assured their friends that the girl was well, Thad and Bob sat looking at each other in troubled silence.

“Wal,” said Bob, at last, “why don’t you go ahead? She’s your gal this week. Bein’ her daddy makes it your play, don’t it?”

Thad, rubbing his bald head desperately, made several ineffectual attempts to speak. At last, with a recklessness born of this inner struggle, he addressed Mrs. Burton:

“‘You see, ma’am, me an’ my pardner here has been takin’ notice lately how my gal Marta is due, first thing we know, to be a growed-up woman.”

“She is, indeed!” replied Jimmy’s mother with an encouraging smile.

“Yes, ma’am, that’s what me an’ Bob here took notice. An’ we’ve been figgerin’ up that mebby it was time she knowed what we know about her. You an’ your son knows the same as everybody does, I reckon, that we ain’t Marta’s real honest-to-God daddies.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Burton, “but we have never, in any way, mentioned the matter to Marta.”

“No, ma’am,” said Thad, “an’ we ain’t neither.”

“An’ that’s jest what’s the matter now,” put in Bob. “The gal ain’t never been told nothin’.”

Mrs. Burton looked at her son.

“I am sure that you men are right,” said Saint Jimmy. “I have been wanting to talk with you about it. You ought to tell Marta everything you know of her and her people—how she came to you—everything.”

The Pardners consulted each other silently. Then Thad turned to Marta’s teacher; the old prospector’s faded blue eyes were fixed on the younger man’s face with a steady, searching gaze that permitted no evasion, even if Saint Jimmy had been disposed to parry the question.

“Is there, to your thinkin’, any perticler reason why my gal ought to be told at this perticler time?”

Saint Jimmy smiled reassuringly.

“No particular reason, so far as I know,” he said. “Of course you realize that there has always been more or less talk. Sooner or later the girl is bound to hear it. She should be fortified with the truth.”

Again Bob and Thad looked at each other helplessly.

“An’ if the truth ain’t jest what you might call fortifyin’—what then?” said Thad at last.

“Yes,” echoed Bob. “What then? What if my pardner an’ me can’t say that all the gossips is talkin’ ain’t so?”

Saint Jimmy did not answer. Mother Burton looked away. Old Thad rubbed his bald head in mournful meditation.

“Doctor Burton,” said Bob slowly, as one feeling his way amid conversational dangers, “Thad an’ me ain’t to say blind, if we be gittin’ old. We can still tell ‘color’ when we run across it.” He consulted his pardner with a look and Thad nodded his head in approval. Bob continued: “We’re almighty proud of what you been doin’ for our gal,” he caught himself quickly. “Excuse me, Pardner—for your gal, I mean.”

Thad raised his hand—a gesture which signified that, in the stress of the situation, he waived the fine point of their usual courtesy, and for this crucial occasion acknowledged their joint fatherhood.

Old Bob swallowed, with difficulty, something that seemed to obstruct his usual freedom of speech.

“An’ I reckon you understand, sir, that we ain’t noways lackin’ in appreciation an’ gratitude to you an’ your ma for helpin’ Marta to grow up into the young woman she is. My pardner an’ me, we sure done what we could, an’ we’d been glad to a-done more if it had a-been possible, but it wasn’t, not for us, an’ we’re sensible to what it all means to our gal. If she wasn’t trained up an’ all educated like you an’ your ma has made her, it wouldn’t much matter what her own folks was or how she first come to us.”

“I understand,” said Saint Jimmy gently, “and I know that the girl could not love you men more if you were, in fact, her own fathers. I know, too, that nothing could make her love you less. But I am convinced that she should know all that you know about her.”

“We would a-told her the story long ago,” said Thad, “if only we’d a-knowed a little more than we do, or mebby, if we hadn’t knowed as much, or if what little we do know didn’t look so almighty bad.”

“It will look a heap worse to her now than it ever did to us,” said Bob.

“It sure will,” agreed Thad, “an’ so, you see, we’ve been waitin’ an’ puttin’ it off, hopin’ that we would mebby, somehow, find out something that, as it is, is lackin’.” He appealed to Mrs. Burton: “You can see how it is, can’t you, ma’am?”

“I understand,” said the good woman, gently, “but I agree with my son. Whatever it is, the story will make no difference in Marta’s love for you, just as it has made no difference in your love for her.”

“Yes,” said Thad, “but how about the difference it might make to—“ he paused and looked at his pardner helplessly. “Ahem—to—I mean——“

Bob spoke quickly:

“To you an’ Saint Jimmy, ma’am. What difference will it make to you folks?”

Thad drew a deep breath of relief and rubbed his bald head with satisfaction.

Mother Burton met them bravely with:

“Nothing that you have to tell can change our feeling for Marta. I could not love her more if she were my own daughter.”

The two old men looked at Saint Jimmy eagerly.

“You dead sure that nothin’ would make you change toward our gal?” demanded Bob.

“You plumb certain, be you, sir?” said old Thad.

Saint Jimmy smiled reassuringly.

“As certain as I am of death,” he answered.

With an air of excited relief Thad faced his pardner.

“That bein’ the case I move, Pardner, that we tell Doctor Burton here what we know, an’ he can tell our gal or not as he sees fit, and when he sees fit.”

“Jest what I was about to offer myself,” returned Bob. “You go ahead.”

CHAPTER V

THE PROSPECTOR’S STORY

“Some claim that the old woman was Sonora Jack’s mother,” said Bob. “Sonora Jack, you know, is half Mex, and a mighty bad citizen, too. He’s somewheres across the line right now, hidin’ out for a killin’ he an’ his crowd made in a holdup’ bout the same time that we’re tellin’ you of.”

Thad took up the story.

“Well, sir, we’d filled our water bags an’ was standin’ talkin’ with the old woman who’d come to watch us—the man, he was away it appeared—when all at once a little boy come trottin’ ’round the corner of the cabin from behind somewheres.”

“About three or four, he was,” said Bob.

“About that,” agreed Thad. “An’ when he seen us he jest stopped short, kind of scared like, an’ stood there cryin’.

“Well, sir, me an’ Bob tumbled in a holy minute that he didn’t belong there. We knowed them old Mexicans didn’t have no kid that wasn’t growed up long ago. An’ this little chap didn’t look like a Mexican youngster nohow. The old woman acted kind of rattled at us lookin’ at the kid so sharp, an’ started in tellin’ us that the muchachito was one of her grandsons. That sounded fair enough at first, but when she turned an’ yelled at the kid in Mex, givin’ him the devil for not stayin’ behind the house like she’d told him to, we seed that somethin’ was wrong. He didn’t savvy Mex no more than we do Chinee.

“While the poor little cuss was standin’ there scared stiff an’ cryin’—not knowin’ what the old woman wanted, Bob here went down on one knee an’ held out his hands invitin’ like. ‘Come here, sonny,’ says he to the kid in English, ‘come on over here an’ let’s have a look at you.’

“Well, sir, that youngster gave a funny little laugh, right out through his tears, an’ come runnin’.

“The old woman didn’t know what to do; but I was keepin’ one eye on her so she didn’t dare try to start anything much.

“Bob, he asked the youngster, ‘What’s your name, sonny?’ an’ the little feller answered back, bright as a dollar: ‘My name’s Marta.’

“‘Marta?’ says Bob, lookin’ up at me puzzled like. ‘That’s a funny name for a boy.’

“‘I ain’t no boy,’ said the kid, quick as a flash, ‘I’m a girl, I am.’”

“An’ by smoke! she was,” ejaculated Bob.

“Yes,” continued Thad, “an’ when the old woman seen that the little gal was talkin’ to us—the old woman she didn’t savvy a word of anything but Mex, but she could tell what was goin’ on—when she see it, she jest naterally grabbed the youngster an’ yanked her into the house an’ shut the door.

“Me an’ Bob made camp not far away that night, an’ after supper, an’ it had got good an’ dark, we was settin’ by the fire talkin’ things over, when all at once we heard the sound of a wagon an’ a child screamin’—sort of choked like. You can believe we wasn’t long gettin’ to where the sound come from. Them Mexicans was lightin’ out with that little gal for across the border.

“By that time, me and my pardner was so plumb sure that there was somethin’ wrong that we didn’t waste no more strength in foolishness. We jest proceeded to give that hombre the third degree ’til he ups an’ confesses that the baby was left with them by some white folks who was on a huntin’ trip, an’ that they was only keepin’ the youngster ’til her daddy an’ mammy come back for her.

“You can guess how quick me an’ Bob was to believe any such yarn as that; so we figured the safest thing to do was to take the baby ourselves into Tucson; which we done.

“Well, sir, by the time we struck town the little gal had made such a hit with us both that we couldn’t near think of givin’ her up.”

“Darndest affectionate kid that ever was,” put in Bob. “Started right off first thing lovin’ us two old rapscallions like we’d always belonged to her, an’ callin’ us both ‘daddy.’”

“We sure done our best to find her real folks, though,” said Thad. “We stayed in Tucson for more’n a month. But the authorities nor nobody couldn’t get no hint nowhere about any kid bein’ lost, nor stole, nor nothin’. Things was movin’ pretty fast in this country them days, an’ the sheriff always had his hands full; so it wasn’t long ’til everybody got busy with some fresh excitement, an’ me an’ Bob was left with the baby on our hands. There didn’t appear to be nothin’ else we could do, so we jest decided that Providence, or good luck, or somethin’, had fixed it so’s us two old mavericks was blessed with a offspring whether we was regularly entitled to one or not. Then pretty soon we moved on over into the Graham Mountains, an’ jest naterally took her along.

“We both was lovin’ her so by now that we was about to fight to see which one was to be her daddy, when we compromised by agreein’ to take turn an’ turn about—week by week. An’ that’s how we come to give her both our names—Hillgrove. Her first name is Martha, we suppose; but Marta was the best she could ever tell us. An’ that’s about all there is of it up to the time we fetched her here an’ you started in teachin’ her.”

“You see, ma’am,” said Bob, “this here is the way me an’ Thad has got it figgered: The baby must have been left with them Mexicans where we found her, ’cause she ain’t Mexican nor any part Mexican herself. Wal, what kind of white folks do you reckon would go away an’ leave a little gal like that, with such an outfit? They couldn’t a-left her accidental like, ’cause if they had they’d a-come back for her, an’ then they’d been huntin’ us. With all the fuss we made about it in Tucson, somebody would a-knowed somethin’ about her sure, if her people hadn’t wanted to get shet of her on account of them bein’ the sort they was. An’ there ain’t been no time since then that me an’ Thad has been hard to find. Don’t you see, her folks couldn’t a-been decent even if her father an’ mother was—was—I mean, even if she was borned all regular an’ right—which don’t look no way likely. Any way you take it, they must a-been a bad sort to throw away a baby like her.”

“You can bet they was,” added Thad mournfully, “for it’s a dead immortal cinch that them old Mexicans couldn’t a-come by her no other way; ’cause they never went anywhere an’ if they had stole her it sure would a-raised enough interest in the country for somebody to a-heard about it. No, sir, take it any way you like, it jest naterally looks bad. An’,” the old prospector finished with an air of relief, “that’s all me an’ my pardner knows about it.”

Saint Jimmy did not speak. He was evidently deeply moved by the strange story. Mrs. Burton was drying her eyes. The Pardners waited, with no little anxiety.

At last Bob asked timidly:

“Be you still thinkin’, sir, as how our gal ought to be told?”

Reluctantly, Saint Jimmy answered:

“I am afraid that Marta must know.”

He looked at his mother.

“I am sure she must know,” said Mrs. Burton with quiet decision. “And you, my son, are the one to tell her. It will come to her easier from you, her teacher, than from any one else.”

“Yes, ma’am,” cried Thad eagerly. “That’s the way me an’ Bob figgered it.”

“Will you do it, sir?” asked Bob.

“Yes,” said Saint Jimmy, “I will tell her.”

The Pardners sighed with relief.

“That sure lets us out of a mighty bad hole,” said Thad. “It’ll be a heap easier on our gal, too.”

“It sure will,” echoed Bob. “Ain’t nobody can tell what kind of a God-awful mess us old fools would a-made of it. We’re almighty grateful to you, sir, for helpin’ us out.”

“We are that,” came from Thad with pathetic earnestness.

Bob said hurriedly:

“An’ now that it’s all settled, Pardner, I move that me an’ you pulls out of here before our gal happens along. I wouldn’t be ketched by her right now for all the money we’re goin’ to have when we strike that big vein we’re tunnelin’ for.”

“Which ain’t so much as it might be at that,” retorted Thad.

“You can’t never tell,” returned Bob with his usual cheery optimism, “gold is where you find it.”

When Bob and Thad were gone, Saint Jimmy and his mother, discussing the matter, were forced to agree with the Pardners. It certainly did look bad. In fact it looked so bad that Saint Jimmy was not at all happy under the burden of the responsibility which the old prospectors had shifted from their own shoulders to his. He foresaw that it would not be easy to tell this young woman whom he had educated, and whose fine, sensitive pride he knew so well, this story that he had just heard from her two foster fathers.

When Marta stopped at the Burtons’ on her way home from Oracle, later in the day, neither Saint Jimmy nor his mother mentioned the Pardners’ visit, and there seemed to be no opportunity for the girl’s teacher to tell her the story he was so sure she should know. Some other time, he told himself, it would be easier, perhaps.

While the Pardners’ daughter was riding home from the Burtons’ that afternoon, and the Pardners were at work in their little mine, Natachee the Indian stood on a point of rock, high on the mountain side—so high that he could look beyond the Cañon of Gold and afar off, over the brown desert that, from the foothills of the Catalinas, stretches away, weary mile after weary mile, until, in the shadowy blue distance, it is lost in the sky.

To those of us who are accustomed to the present-day Indian in his white man’s garb, doing the white man’s work on the white man’s roads and ranches, Natachee would have aroused peculiar, not to say amusing, interest. From the single feather in the headband which bound his long, raven-black hair to his beaded moccasins, he was dressed in the picturesque costume of his savage fathers. Save for a broad hunting knife, he was armed only with the primitive bow and arrows. He was in the best years of his manhood and his face and bearing would have graced the hero of a Fenimore Cooper Indian tale.

But however much he seemed out of step with the times, that lone figure, standing sentinel-like on the rocky point, fitted his wild surroundings. So, indeed, might one of his ancestors have stood to watch the strange new human life when it first began to move along those trails that, until then, had known only the sandaled and moccasined feet of prehistoric peoples.

An hour passed. The Indian held his place as motionless as the rock against which he leaned, while his somber gaze ranged over those mighty reaches of desert and mountain and sky. High over Rice Peak a golden eagle wheeled on guard before the nest of his royal mate. But Natachee seemed not to see. From a dead oak on Samaniego Ridge a red-tailed hawk screamed his shrill challenge. The Indian apparently did not hear. A company of buzzards circled above a dark object in the wash below the Wheeler Ranch corrals. Natachee gave no heed. A ground squirrel leaped to a near-by rock to sit bolt upright with bright eyes fixed upon the red man, the while he sounded a chirping note of inquiry. But the Indian’s gaze remained steadfastly fixed on that distant landscape where he could see a cloud of dust that was raised by a swiftly moving automobile on the Oracle road. On the Bankhead Highway there were two similar clouds. In the purple haze beyond the point of the Tortollita Mountains, a streamer of smoke marked the position of a Southern Pacific Overland train that was approaching Tucson from the western coast. The face of the red watchman on the mountain side was set stern and grim. In his somber eyes there was a gleam of savage meaning.

The sun was just touching the tops of the Tucson hills when the Indian started and leaned forward with suddenly quickened interest.

No ordinary power of human vision would have noticed that black speck in the vast stretch of country, much less could the ordinary observer have said exactly what it was that had attracted the Indian’s attention. But Natachee saw that the tiny dot, moving so slowly on the old road into the Cañada del Oro, was a man. His interest was excited to an unusual degree because the man was walking, unaccompanied even by a pack burro.

And now the evening wind from the desert, fragrant with the smell of greasewood, mesquite and cat-claw, swept along the mountain side. The Tucson hills were massed dark blue with their outlines sharply cut against the colors of the sunset. Natachee, watching, saw that lone figure on the trail below enter the Cañon of Gold and lose itself in the gathering dusk.

As the shadows thickened, the night prowlers on padded feet crept from their dark retreats into the gloom. Owls and bats on silent wings swept by. Old ghosts of the dead past stirred again on the old desert and mountain ways. In the deeper dusk that now filled the cañon, voices awoke—strange, murmuring, whispering, phantom voices that seemed to come from an innumerable company of dreary, hopeless souls. The light went out of the western sky. Details of plant and rock and bush were lost. Weird and wild, like a mysterious spirit brooding over the scene, the dark figure of the Indian on the rocky point above the Cañon of Gold was silhouetted against the starlit sky.

In the little white house on the mountain side, Saint Jimmy was thinking of the strange story that the Pardners had told.

In their home beside the cañon creek, the old prospectors and their partnership daughter were sleeping, with no dreams of the strange leading of the tangled threads of lives to the Cañon of Gold.

Far away to the south, in old Mexico, two men sat in a cantina. Between them, on a table, with glasses and a bottle of mescal, lay a crudely drawn map. As they talked together in low tones, they referred often to the rude sketch which bore in poorly written words “La mina con la puerta de fierro en la Cañada del Oro”—The mine with the door of iron in the Cañon of the Gold.

CHAPTER VI

NIGHT

He was a young man of about twenty-two or twenty-three years—tall, but rather slender, with a face habitually clean shaven but covered, just now, with a stubby beard of several days’ growth. His skin, where it was exposed, was sunburned rather than tanned that deep color so marked in the out-of-doors men of the West. On the whole, he gave the impression, somehow, of one but recently recovered from a serious illness; and yet he did not appear overfatigued, though the pack which he carried was not light and he had evidently been many hours on the road. In spite of his rude dress and unkempt appearance due to his mode of traveling there was, in his bearing, the unmistakable air of a man of business. But he was that type of business man that knows something more than the daily grind of money-making machines. His world, apparently, was not wholly a world of factories and banks and institutions of commerce.

Forced, at last, by the approaching darkness, to decide upon some place to spend the night, the traveler selected a spot beside the cañon creek, a hundred yards from the road. But even after he had lowered his heavy pack to the ground, he stood for some minutes looking anxiously about, as if still uncertain as to the wisdom of his selection.

Nor was the man’s manner wholly that of inexperience. Suddenly, without thought of his evening meal, or any preparation for his comfort until the morning, he climbed again up the steep bank to the road, where he gazed back along the way he had come and studied the mountain sides with eyes of dread. The man was in an agony of fear. Not until it was too dark to distinguish objects at any distance did he return to the place where he had left his pack and set about the necessary work of preparing his supper and making his bed.

Hurriedly, as best he could in the failing light, he gathered a supply of wood and, after several awkward failures, succeeded in kindling a fire. From his pack he took a small frying pan, a coffeepot, a tin cup, and a meager supply of food. With these, and with water from the creek, he made shift to prepare an unaccustomed meal. Several times he paused, to stand gazing into the fire as if lost in thought. Again and again he turned his head quickly to listen. Often with a shuddering start he whirled to search the darkness beyond the flickering shadows, as if in fear of what the light of his fire might bring upon him. When he had eaten his poorly prepared supper, he spread his blankets and lay down.

There was something pitiful in the trivial and puny details of this lone stranger’s camp in the wild Cañada del Oro. There was something sinister in the night life that crept and crawled in the darkness about him. There was something pathetic in the man’s lying down to sleep, unprotected, amid such surroundings.

The mountains are very friendly to those who know them; to those who know them not, they are grim and dreadful—when the day is gone. Night skies are kind to those who love the stars; to others they are heavy with brooding fears. The timid life of the wild places is good company for those who know each voice and sound; to others every movement is a menace, every call a voice of danger—when the sun is down.

Cowering in his blankets the man listened for a while to the strange and fearful things that stirred in the near-by bushes, on the rocky ledges, and on the mountain sides above. He heard the cañon voices whispering, murmuring, moaning. The night deepened. The boisterous song of the creek became a sullen growl. The mountain walls seemed to close in. The stars above the peaks and ridges were lonely and far away. The camp fire, so tiny in the gloom, burned low.

The sleeping man groaned and stirred uneasily as if in pain, and a fox that had crept too close slipped away in startled flight. The man cried out in his sleep, and a coyote that was following the scent of the camp up the wind turned aside to slink into the thicket of mesquite. The man awoke and springing to his feet stood as if at bay, and a buck that was feeding not far away lifted his antlered head to listen with wary alertness. From somewhere on the heights came the cry of a mountain lion, and at the sound the night was suddenly as still as death. The man shuddered and quickly threw more wood on the dying fire. Again he lay down to cower in his blankets—to sleep restlessly—and to dream his troubled dreams.

In the first faint light of the morning, a dark form might have been seen moving stealthily down the mountain above the stranger’s camp. The buck, with a snort of fear, leaped away, crashing through the brush. The prowling coyote fled down the cañon. On every side the wild creatures of the night slunk into the dense covers of manzanita and buckthorn and cat-claw.

Silently, as the gray shadows through which he crept, Natachee the Indian drew near the place where the white man lay. From behind a near-by bush the Indian observed every detail of the camp. When the form wrapped in the blanket did not stir, the Indian stole from his sheltering screen and with soft-footed, noiseless movements, inspected the stranger’s outfit. He even bent over the sleeping man to see his face. The man moved—tossing an arm and muttering. Swift as a fox the Indian slipped away; silent as a ghost he disappeared among the bushes.

The gray of the morning sky changed to saffron and rose and flaming red. The shadowy trees and bushes assumed definite shapes. The detail of the rocks emerged from the gloom. The man awoke.

He had just finished breakfast when he heard the sound of horse’s hoofs on the road. With a startled cry he leaped to his feet. The Lizard was riding toward him.

Like a hunted creature the man drew back, half crouching, as if to escape. But it was too late. Pale and trembling he stood waiting as the horseman drew up beside the road, on the bank above the creek, and sat looking down upon him and his camp.

CHAPTER VII

THE STRANGER’S QUEST

He looked curiously at the stranger’s outfit and, ignoring the fact that the camper had not spoken, seated himself with the air of one taking his welcome for granted.

The stranger smiled. The fear that had so shaken him a few moments before was gone, and there was relief in his voice as he bade his visitor a quite unnecessary welcome.

“Ye’r a-footin’ hit, be ye?” the Lizard continued with garrulous ease. “Wal, that’s one way of goin’; but I’ll take a good hoss fer mine. A feller’ll jist naterally wear out quick ernough no matter how keerful he’d be. Never ’lowed I had ary call t’ take an’ plumb walk myse’f t’ death on purpose. Them’s good blankets you’ve got thar. Need ’em, too, these nights, if ’tis spring. That thar coffeepot ain’t no ’count, though—not fer me, that is—wouldn’t hold half what I’d take three times a day, reg’lar.” He laughed loudly as if a good joke were hidden somewhere in his remarks if only the other were clever enough to find it.

“You live in this neighborhood, do you?” the stranger asked.

“What, me? Oh shore. My name’s Bill Janson—live down th’ cañon a piece, jist below whar th’ road comes in. Paw an’ maw an’ me live thar t’gether. We drifted in from Arkansaw eight year ago come this fall. What’s yer name? Whar ye from? What’re you a-doin’ here?”

The stranger hesitated before he answered slowly:

“My name is—Edwards—Hugh Edwards. I came here from Tucson. I want to prospect—look for gold, you know. I heard there were some—ah—placers, I think you call them, in this cañon.”

The Lizard grinned, a wide-mouthed grin of superior knowledge. “Hit’s plumb easy t’ see y’ know all about prospectin’. Y’r some edicated, I jedge. Ben t’ school an’ them thar college places a right smart lot, ain’t y’ now?”

The other replied with some sharpness:

“I suppose it is not impossible for one to learn how to dig for gold, even if one has learned to read and write, is it?”

The Lizard responded heartily, but with tolerant superiority:

“Larn—shore—ain’t nothin’ t’ pannin’ gold ’cept a lot of hard work an’ mighty pore pay. Anybody’ll larn ye. Take the Pardners up yonder—old Bob Hill an’ Thad Grove—they’d—“ he checked himself suddenly and slapped a lean thigh. “By Glory! I’ll bet a pretty you’ve done come t’ find that thar old lost Mine with th’ Iron Door, heh? Ain’t ye now?” He leered at the stranger with shifty, close-set eyes, his long head with its narrow sloping brow cocked sidewise with what was meant to be a very knowing, “I-have-you-now-sir” sort of air.

The man who had given his name as Hugh Edwards laughed.

“Really I can’t say that I would object to finding any old mine if it was a good one, would you?”

The Lizard shook his head solemnly and with a voice and manner that was nicely calculated to invite confidence, replied:

“Thar’s been a lot of people, one time an’ another, a-huntin’ this Mine with th’ Iron Door. Thar was one bunch that come clean from Spain; an’ they had a map an’ everythin’. You ain’t got no map ner writin’ of any sort, now, have you?”

“No,” returned the stranger. “But I suppose it is true that there is gold to be found here?”

The Lizard was plainly disappointed but evidently deemed it unwise to press his inquiry.

“Oh, shore, thar’s gold here—some—fer them what likes t’ work fer hit. They’ve allus been a-diggin’ in this here cañon an’ in these here mountains, as ye kin see by their old prospect holes everywhar. But nobody ain’t never made no big strikes yet. Thar’s one feller a-livin’ in these hills what don’t dig no gold though; an’ they do say, too, as how he knows more ’bout th’ ol’ lost mine than ary other man a-livin’. Some says he even knows whar hits at.” The Lizard shook his head solemnly. “You shore want t’ watch out fer him, too. He’s plumb bad—that’s what I’m a-tellin’ you.”

“Yes?” said Hugh Edwards, encouragingly.

“Uh-huh, he ain’t no white man neither. He’s Injun—calls hisse’f Natachee, whatever that is. He’s one of these here school Injuns gone wild agin—lives all ’lone way in the upper part of th’ cañon somewhar, whar hits so blamed rough a goat couldn’t get ’round; an’ togs hisse’f up with th’ sort of things them old-time Injuns used to wear—won’t even use a gun, jist packs a bow an’ arrers. I ain’t got no use fer an Injun nohow. This here’s a white man’s country, I say, an’ this here Natachee he’s the worst I ever did see. He’d plunk one of them thar arrers of hisn inter you, er slit yer throat any old time if he dast. I can’t say fer shore whether he knows about this Mine with th’ Iron Door er not, but hit’s certain shore you got t’ watch him. Hit’s all right fer that thar Saint Jimmy an’ them old Pardners t’ be friends with him if they like hit, but I know what I know.”

Hugh Edwards did not overlook this opportunity to learn something of the people who lived in the Cañon of Gold; and the Lizard was more than willing to tell all he knew, perhaps even to add something for good measure. When at last the Lizard arose reluctantly, the stranger had heard every current version of the history and relationship of the two old prospectors and their partnership daughter, with copious comments on their characters, sidelights on their personal affairs, their intercourse with their neighbors, their business, and every possible theory explaining them.

“Not that thar’s anybody what really knows anythin’,”—the Lizard was careful to make this clear—“’cept of course that old story ’bout them a-findin’ th’ gal somewhars when she warn’t much more’n a baby; which, as I say, ain’t no way nateral enough fer anybody t’ believe—’cause babies like her ain’t jist found—picked up anywhar, as you may say, without no paw ner maw ner nothin’. An’ if thar warn’t somethin’ wrong about hit, what would them two old devils be so close-mouthed fer? Why, sir, one time when I asked ’em about hit—jist sort of interested an’ neighborly like—they ris up like they was a-fixin’ t’ climb all over me. Yes, they did—ye kin see yerself hit ain’t all straight, whatever ’tis. Even a feller like you can’t help puttin’ two an’ two together if he’s got any sense a-tall.

“Wal,” he concluded regretfully, “I shore got t’ be gittin’ on t’ Oracle er hit won’t be no use fer me t’ go, nohow.” He moved slowly toward his horse. “Better come along,” he added. “This here trail t’ Oracle goes right past the Pardners’ place, an’ Saint Jimmy’s an’ George Wheeler’s. Best come along an’ see th’ country an’ git acquainted.”

“Thanks,” said Edwards, “but really I can’t go to-day. I want to get settled somewhere before I take much time for purely social matters, you see.”

“Huh,” grunted the Lizard, “gettin’ settled ain’t nothin’; hit’s all day ’til t’morrer ain’t hit?” Then, as if suddenly inspired with the possibilities of having a friend at the very source of so much interesting, if speculative, information, the Lizard added: “I’ll tell ye what ye do, you come along with me as fer as th’ Pardners’ place. They’ll he’p ye t’ get located. They’re all right that a-way, an’ there ain’t nothin’ them two old-timers don’t know about th’ prospectin’ game. An’ right up th’ cañon, not more’n a half a quarter from them, is an old cabin you could take. Hit war built by some prospector long time ago. George Wheeler, he told me. Seems th’ feller lived thar fer two er three year an’ then went away an’ didn’t never come back. You might have t’ fix th’ shack up a bit, but that wouldn’t be no work; an’ thar’s allus some gold t’ be found up an’ down th’ creek. Th’ Pardners they’ll larn ye how, an’ mebby you kin larn somethin’ ’bout them an’ that thar gal of theirn.”

“Thank you,” returned Edwards, “but I really can’t go now. I am not packed yet, you see.”

But the Lizard was not to be deprived of the advantage of his opportunity. “Aw, shucks—what’s th’ matter with ye? Grab yer stuff an’ come along. Ye can’t be stand-offish with me.”

Because there seemed to be no way of refusing the invitation, the stranger hastily threw his things together and, with his pack on his back, set out up the cañon in company with the Lizard.

On the steep side of the mountain above, Natachee, creeping like a dark shadow among the rocks and bushes, followed the two men.

Saint Jimmy, that Sunday morning, was sitting with a book by the window. But Mother Burton, looking through the door from their tiny kitchen where she was busy with her household work, could see that her son was not reading. Jimmy’s book was open, but his eyes were fixed upon the far distant horizon where the desert, with its dreamy maze of colors, becomes a faint blue shadow against the sky. And Jimmy’s mother knew that his thoughts were as far from the printed page as that shadowy sky-line was distant from the window where he sat.

Often she had seen him in those moods—sitting so still that the spirit seemed to have gone out from its temporary dwelling place to visit for a little those places which lie so far beyond the horizon of all fleshly vision and earthly hopes and aspirations. Of what was he thinking, she wondered, if indeed it could be said at such times that he was thinking at all. What was he seeing, with that far-away look in his eyes, as of one whose vision had been trained in the schools of suffering, of disappointments, and failures, and disillusions, to a more than physical strength. Was he communing with some one over there in that world beyond the sky-line of material things? Was he merely dreaming of what might have been? Or was he living in what might be? Wise Mother Burton, to know that there were certain rooms in her son’s being that even her mother love could not unlock. Wise Mother Burton, to understand, to know, when to speak and when to be still.

Saint Jimmy was aroused at last by the clatter of iron-shod hoofs on the cañon trail. An instant later, Nugget, running with glorious strength and ease, dashed into view, and Marta’s joyous self came between the man at the window and the distant sky-line. Another moment and the girl stood in the open doorway.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEW NEIGHBOR