CHAPTER XII

GHOSTS

“The Cañon of Gold is haunted by the ghosts of these disappointed ones. I, Natachee, know these things because I am an Indian.”

Marta could not have explained, even to herself, why she was so anxious to see Saint Jimmy and Hugh Edwards together. Certainly she made no effort to find an explanation.

Through the years that he had been her teacher, Saint Jimmy had come to personify, as it were, her spiritual or intellectual ideal.

Any why not, since it was Saint Jimmy who had helped her form her spiritual and intellectual ideals? Their daily association, their friendship, their love--for she did love Saint Jimmy--had all been grounded and developed in an atmosphere of books and study that was purely Platonic. In her teacher she had come to see embodied the essential truths which he had taught. She had never for a moment thought of Doctor Burton and herself as a man and a woman. He was simply Saint Jimmy. She was his grateful pupil who loved him dearly because he was Saint Jimmy.

But from the very first moment of their meeting Marta was conscious that the appeal of Hugh Edwards’ personality was an appeal that to her was new and strange--she was conscious that he had made an impression upon her such as no man had ever before made. For that matter, she had never before met such a man. As she had said so many times, he made her think of Saint Jimmy and yet he was different. And because the experience was so foreign to anything that she had ever known, she did not understand.

Because Hugh Edwards made her think so often of Saint Jimmy, and because he was so different from Saint Jimmy, she was anxious to see the two men together. Nor could the girl understand her teacher’s persistent failure to call on their new neighbor. It was not at all like Saint Jimmy. Nothing, perhaps, revealed quite so fully Marta’s lack of experience in such things as her failure to understand why Saint Jimmy was so slow in making the acquaintance of Hugh Edwards.

And now at last her wish to see these two men together was gratified. The girl’s radiant face revealed her excitement. Her voice was jubilant, her laughter rang out with delicious abandon. She was tingling with animation and lively interest. Her two friends could no more resist the impulse to laugh with her than one could refrain from smiling at the glee of a winsome child.

As they shook hands she watched them, looking from one to the other with an expression of such eager, anxious inquiry on her glowing countenance that the men were just a little embarrassed.

“I really should have come to see you long ago,” said Saint Jimmy. “The right sort of neighbors are not so plentiful in the Cañada del Oro that we can afford to neglect them. I have heard so much about you, though, that I feel as if you were really an old-timer whom I have known for years.”

He looked smilingly at Marta.

Hugh Edwards did not appear at all displeased at the suggestion that the girl had been talking about him.

“And I,” he returned with an equally significant glance at Marta, “have heard so much about Doctor Burton that if there was ever a time when I didn’t know him I have forgotten it.”

Marta was delighted. She could not mistake the fact that the two men, as it sometimes happens, liked each other instantly. They seemed to know and understand each other instinctively. The truth is that the men themselves were just a little relieved to find this to be the fact.

Doctor Burton saw in Marta’s neighbor a man of more than ordinary personality. That one of such character and education should choose to live as Edwards was living, amid surroundings so foreign to the environment in which he had so evidently been born and reared, and should be content to occupy himself with such menial labor, was to Saint Jimmy a puzzling thing. But Saint Jimmy was too broad in his sympathies--too big in his understanding of life to be suspicious of everything that puzzled him. It would, indeed, have been difficult for any healthy-minded, clean-thinking person to be suspicious of Hugh Edwards.

And Hugh Edwards recognized instantly in Marta’s teacher that quality which led all men, except such poor characterless creatures as the Lizard, to speak in his presence with instinctive gentleness and deference.

When they were seated in the shade of the cabin and the two men, who were to her so like and yet so unlike, were exchanging the usual small talk with which all friendships, however close and enduring, commonly begin, Marta watched and listened.

She was right, she thought proudly; they were alike, and yet they were different. What was it? Too frank to dissemble, too untrained in such things to deceive, too natural and innocent to hide her interest, she compared, contrasted, analyzed. But while she was seeking an answer to the thing that puzzled her, there was in her mind and heart not the faintest shadow of a suggestion that she was choosing.

There was no occasion for choice. Indeed, she was not in reality thinking--she was feeling.

And the men, while more apt in hiding their emotions, were scarcely less conscious of the situation.

Suddenly Doctor Burton saw the girl’s face change. She was looking past them as they sat facing her, toward the corner of the cabin. Her expression of eager animation vanished and in its stead came a look of almost fear. In the same instant, Jimmy was conscious that Edwards, too, had noticed the girl’s change of countenance, and that a quick shadow of dread and apprehension had fallen upon him. The two men turned quickly.

Natachee was standing at the corner of the cabin.

For a long moment no one spoke. Then with a suggestion of a smile, as if for some reason he was pleased with the situation, the Indian raised his hand and uttered his customary word of greeting:

“How.”

They returned his salutation and he came forward to accept the chair offered by Edwards. And though his dress, as usual, was that of a primitive savage, his manner, at the moment, was in no way different from the bearing of any white man with a background of educational and social advantages. As he seated himself, he smiled again, as if finding these three people together gave him a peculiar satisfaction.

Doctor Burton spoke with the easy familiarity of an old friend:

“Natachee, why on earth can’t you act more like a human being and less like a disembodied spirit? You always come and go as silently as a ghost.”

“I am as God made me,” the Indian returned lightly, then he added with mocking deference to the three white people: “Except for a few improvements added by your civilization. It is odd, is it not,” he continued, “how the noble red man of your so highly civilized writers and painters and uplifters of various sorts becomes so often an ignoble vagabond once you have subjected him to those same civilizing influences?”

“Certainly no one would accuse you of having acquired too much civilization,” retorted Jimmy.

“I hope not, I am sure,” returned the Indian quietly. Then turning to the others, he said graciously, “You will pardon us for this little exchange of compliments. We are not really being rude to each other, just friendly, that is all. With me, Saint Jimmy always drops his mask of saintliness and becomes a savage, and I cease being a savage and become, if not a saint, at least an imitator of the white man’s virtues. It is the privilege of our friendship.”

“You are an old fraud,” declared Saint Jimmy.

“You flatter me,” returned Natachee. “My white teachers would be proud of the honor you confer. They tried so hard, you know, to educate me.”

Edwards was amazed. He had never before heard Natachee talk in this bantering vein. With him the Indian had always spoken gravely. He had seldom smiled and had never laughed. The white man felt, too, that underlying the playfulness of the Indian’s words and the seeming pleasant humor of his mood, there was a savage interest--a cruel certainty in the final outcome of some game in which he was taking a grim part. He seemed to be playing as a cat plays with the victim of its brutal and superior cunning.

While Edwards was thinking these things and watching the red man with an odd feeling of dread which made him recall Marta’s saying that the Indian always gave her the creeps, Natachee addressed the girl with grave courtesy:

“It is really time that your teacher called upon your good neighbor, isn’t it? I was beginning to fear that our Saint was harboring some hidden grievance that provoked him to forget the social obligations of his exalted position.”

Marta made no reply save a nervous laugh of embarrassment.

Doctor Burton flushed and said hurriedly:

“I was just asking Mr. Edwards, Natachee, when you materialized so unexpectedly, how he liked living in the Cañada del Oro.”

“And I was about to reply,” said Edwards with enthusiasm, “that it is the most beautiful, the most wonderfully satisfying place, I have ever known.”

The Indian smiled, and his dark eyes glanced from Marta to Saint Jimmy, as he said:

“Our cañon is being very good to Mr. Edwards, I think. It is giving him health, gold enough for the necessities of life, and that peace which passeth all understanding, with the possibility of acquiring great wealth. It delights him with the beauty and the grandeur of nature. It bestows upon him the blessings of a charming and delightful companionship. And last, but not least, it affords him a sanctuary from his enemies--if he has any. What more could any man ask of any place?”

Hugh Edwards moved uneasily.

The expression of Marta’s face was that of a wondering, half-frightened child.

Saint Jimmy looked at the Indian intently, as if he, too, had caught the feeling of a hidden, sinister meaning beneath the red man’s courteous manner and half-jesting words.

“Natachee,” he said slowly, “I have often wondered--just what does the Cañada del Oro mean to you?”

At the Doctor’s simple question or, perhaps, at the tone of his voice, the countenance of the Indian suddenly became as cold and impassive as a face of iron. Sitting there before them, clothed in the wild dress of his savage ancestors, with his dark features framed in the jet-black hair with that single drooping feather, he seemed, all at once, to have thrown off every vestige of his contact with the schools of civilization. When he had been speaking in the manner of a white man, there had been something pathetic in his appearance. Only his native dignity had saved him from being ridiculous. But now he was the living spirit of the untamed deserts and mountains that on every side shut in the Cañon of Gold. His dark eyes, filled with the brooding memories of a vanishing race, turned slowly from face to face.

The three white people waited, with a strange feeling of uneasiness, for him to speak.

“You say that I, Natachee, come and go as a ghost. Well, perhaps I am a ghost. Why not? It would not be held beyond the belief of some of your philosophers that the spirit of one who once, long ago, dwelt amid these scenes, should return again in this body that you call me, Natachee the Indian. The Cañada del Oro is peopled with ghosts. Those who, in the years that are gone, lived here in the Cañon of Gold were as the blossoms on the mountain sides in spring. In the summer months when there was no rain, the blossoms disappeared. Then the rains came--the ‘Little Spring’ is here--and look, the flowers are everywhere.

“In this Cañon from the desert below to the pines above, there are holes by the thousands where men have dug for gold. Climb the mountains and go among the cliffs and crags and there are more and more of these holes that were made by those who sought the yellow wealth. Walk the ridges and make your way into the hidden ravines and gorges--everywhere you will find them--these holes that men have dug in their search for treasure. And every hole--every stroke of a pick--every shovel of dirt--every pan of gravel--was a dream that did not come true; a hope that was not fulfilled.

“The Cañon of Gold is haunted by the ghosts of these disappointed ones. They are the shadows that move upon the mountain sides when the sun is down and the timid stars creep forth in the lonely sky. They are the lights that come and go in the cañon depths when the frightened moon tries to hide in the pines of Mount Lemmon. They are the voices that we hear in the nighttime, whispering, murmuring, moaning. Weary spirits that cannot rest, troubled souls that find no peace--the disappointed ones.

“And you who dare to dream and hope and labor here in the Cañon of Gold to-day as those thousands who dared to dream and hope and labor here before you--what are you but living ghosts among these restless spirits of the dead? What are you to-day but shadows among the shades of yesterday?

“You, Doctor Burton, are only a memory of dreams that did not come true. You, Mr. Edwards, are but the ghost of the man you once planned to be. You, Miss Hillgrove, are but the living embodiment of hopes that were never fulfilled.

“As the shadow of an eagle passes, you came and you shall go. As the trail of the eagle in the air so shall your dreams, your hopes and your labor, be.

“I, Natachee, know these things. But because I am an Indian, I dream no dreams--I have no hopes.” He arose and for a moment stood silent before them. Then he said: “Natachee the Indian lives among the ghosts in the Cañon of Gold.”

Before they could speak, he was gone; as silently as he had come he disappeared around the corner of the cabin.

The two men and the girl sat as if under a spell and in the heart of each there was a strange sadness and a shadow of fear.

* * * * *

As Doctor Burton made his way homeward, he wished more than ever that he had told Marta the things that the Pardners had related to him.

Ever since that day when she had first talked to him of the stranger, Saint Jimmy had watched carefully the girl’s growing interest in her new neighbor. And, while Marta herself had been wholly unconscious of the true meaning of those emotions which so disturbed her, her teacher had understood that the womanhood of his child pupil was beginning to assert itself. He was too wise not to know also that the time was approaching when Marta herself would understand.

Through all her girlhood she had been no more conscious of herself than were the wild creatures that she knew so much better than she knew her own humankind. She had lived and accepted life without a thought of the part that, as a woman, she would some day be called upon to play in it. Because of this freedom from self, she had not been deeply concerned about the beginnings of her life. But with the arousing of those instincts that were to her so strange would come inevitably a tremendous quickening of her interest in herself. This new and vital interest in herself would as surely force her to inquire with determined and fearful persistency into her past. Who was she? Who were her parents? Under what circumstances was she born?

Doctor Burton knew the fine pride and the sensitive nature of his pupil too well not to realize that, when the time did come for the girl to ask these questions, her happiness might well depend upon the answers.

The Lizard’s loose-mouthed gossip had brought him suddenly face to face with a situation which was to his mind filled with real danger to Marta’s future. His meeting with Hugh Edwards, his quick observation of the comradeship that had developed between Marta and her neighbor, the uneasy forebodings aroused by the Indian’s words, all combined now to make him resolve that, at any cost to himself, he no longer would put off telling the girl what she ought to know. If Hugh Edwards were not the type of man he was, or if Marta were not the kind of girl she was, it would not, perhaps, make so much difference. To-morrow Marta was going to Oracle. She would stop at the little white house on the mountain side on her way home. Saint Jimmy promised himself that he would surely tell her then.