CHAPTER XXII

THE LOST MINE

“The hope that brought the first white man to the Cañada del Oro is your only hope. You shall labor--you shall find your gold--if you can.”

From the door of the hut the Indian led the way into the darkness.

There was no friendly moon. The sky was overcast with lowering clouds that shut out the light of the stars. From the thick blackness of the cañon far below, the sullen murmur of the creek came up like the growl of angry voices from the depth of some black pit. The mountains seemed to breathe like gigantic monsters in a weird, dream world. The very air was heavy with the mystery of the night.

They had not gone a hundred yards before the white man lost all sense of direction. As they made their way down the steep side of the mountain he could scarcely distinguish the form of the Indian who was within reach of his hand.

Presently Natachee stopped, and, lighting the candle he carried, said:

“See, there is your pick and shovel. Are you satisfied that this is the place where you work?”

“Certainly, I can see that,” returned the other wonderingly.

“Good!” returned the Indian. “Now we will go only a little way from this place.”

He extinguished the candlelight, and the inky darkness enveloped them like a blanket.

“But,” he added, “I must first make sure of your never again going as we shall go. I will blindfold you and you will follow me by holding fast to this rope. Are you willing?”

There was a taunting sneer in his tone that would have goaded the white man into any reckless adventure.

“As you like,” he said shortly.

When the cloth was bound securely about Hugh’s eyes, the Indian caught him by the arms and whirled him about until he was completely bewildered. Then he felt one end of the rope thrust into his hand.

“Come,” said the Indian, and gave a slight pull on the rope.

It was impossible for the white man to form any idea as to their course. At times they climbed upward, then again they descended as rapidly. At other times they made their way along some steep slope. Now and then the Indian bade him go on hands and knees, or warned him to move with care and to hold fast to the shrubs and bushes. At last Hugh Edwards knew that they were entering a cavern by an opening barely large enough for them to crawl through. He could not even guess the dimensions of this underground chamber, but he imagined that it was a passage or tunnel, for as they went on he touched a wall on his right and the Indian cautioned him to keep his head down.

For some distance they walked in this fashion, then Natachee stopped, and the white man heard him strike a match. A moment later his blindfold was removed.

“Your candle,” said Natachee sharply, and lighted it from the one he himself held.

The white man gazed curiously about him.

“Look!” cried the Indian. “Look and say if I, Natachee, lied when I told you of the gold that is so near the place where you work--if only you knew where to find it.”

Natachee the Indian had not lied. Thousands upon thousands of dollars in golden value lay within the circle of the candlelight.

Hugh Edwards stood amazed. He could not know the full extent of the vein, but a fortune of staggering proportions was within sight. The farther end of the chamber was an irregular mass of rocks and earth that had quite evidently fallen and slid from above; but the remaining walls and ceiling were as obviously cut by human hands.

The white man looked at his companion inquiringly.

“An old mine?”

The Indian, with an air of triumph, answered:

“The Mine with the Iron Door.”

As one half dreaming feels for something real and tangible, Hugh Edwards said hesitatingly:

“But why, knowing this, have you not made use of it--why do you leave such wealth buried here?”

“You forget that I am an Indian,” the red man answered. “If I, Natachee, were to tell the secret of the Mine with the Iron Door, would the white men permit me to retain this treasure or to use it for my people? When has your race ever permitted an Indian to have anything that a white man wanted for himself? Suppose it were possible for me to take this treasure without revealing the secret of the mine--of what use would its gold be to me? Could I, an Indian, use such wealth without bringing upon myself and my people, envy, hatred and persecution from those who say that this is a white man’s country?

“And suppose I could use this gold? What would an Indian do with gold? The things that the white man buys with gold mean nothing to an Indian. We do not want the white man’s things. We do not want your factories and railroads and ships and banks and churches. We do not want your music, your art, your libraries and schools. An Indian does not want any of the things that this yellow stuff means to the white man.

“Could I, with this gold, restore to my people the homeland of their fathers? Could I destroy your cities, your government, your laws and all the institutions of your civilization that you have built up in this, the land that you have taken by force and treachery from my people? Could I, Natachee, with this gold bring back the forests you have cut down, the streams you have dried up or poisoned, the lands you have made desolate? Could I bring back the antelope, the deer and all the life that the white man has destroyed?”

Stooping, he caught up a piece of the quartz that was heavy with the gold it carried. Holding it in the light of the candle, he said:

“Before the white man came, this, to the Indians, was only a pretty stone, of no more value than any other bright-colored pebble. If the red man used it at all it was as an ornament of trivial significance--of no real worth. But to the white man, this is everything. It is honor and renown--it is achievement and success--it is the beginning and the end of life--it is sacrifice and hardship--it is luxury and want--it is bloody war with its murdered millions--it is government--it is law--it is religion--it is love. And it was this--this bit of worthless yellow dirt--that brought the first white man to the Indians. For gold, the white adventurers braved the dangers of an unknown ocean and forced their way into an unknown land. For gold, they have robbed and killed the people whose homeland they invaded, until to-day we are as dead grass and withered leaves in the pathway of the fire of the white man’s greed. We are as a handful of desert dust in the whirlwind of your civilization.”

He threw the piece of quartz aside with a gesture of loathing, and stood for a moment with his head lowered in sorrow.

And once again Hugh Edwards, in spite of the cruel torture to which the Indian had subjected him, felt a thrill of pity for his tormentor.

But before the white man could find words to express his emotions, Natachee suddenly lifted his head, and with the cruel light of savage exultation blazing in his eyes, went a step toward his startled companion.

“Do you understand now why I have brought you here? Do you understand my purpose in permitting you to see, with your own eyes, the gold of the Mine with the Iron Door?

“Your only hope of freedom, from the hell to which you have been condemned through a white man’s trickery and by your white man’s laws, is in gold. Only through the possession of gold can you hope to win the woman you love and who loves you.

“You say you would give your soul for the gold which means so much to you. Good! I believe you. I am glad. Here is the gold--look at it--handle it--dream of all that it would bring you. Here is freedom from your hell--here is love--here is happiness--here is the woman you love. It is all here, within reach of your hand, and you shall never touch one grain of it. If you had a hundred souls to offer in exchange, you should not touch one grain of it. Because you are a white man, and because I am an Indian.

“I, Natachee, have spoken.”

The meaning of the Indian’s words burned in the white man’s brain. Slowly he looked about that treasure chamber as if summing up in his mind all that it might mean to him. His nerves and muscles were tense with agony. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. His face was twisted in a grimace of pain. And in the agony of his torture a dreadful purpose came.

The watching Indian saw, and his sinewy hand loosed the knife in his belt, as his deep voice broke the silence of the old mine.

“No, you will not try that. You are unarmed. I would kill you before you could strike a blow. There is no hope for you there. Your one chance is to dig for the gold you need. You might strike it rich, you know. Who can say--to-morrow--another stroke of your pick. The hope that brought the first white man to the Cañada del Oro is your only hope. As so many of your race have labored in the Cañon of Gold you shall labor--you shall find your gold--if you can.”

The white man bowed his head.

Natachee went to him with the cloth to bind his eyes.

Quietly Hugh Edwards submitted to the bandage. The Indian extinguished the light of the candle and thrust the end of the rope into his victim’s unresisting hand.

“The white man is wise to take the one chance that is his,” said the Indian. “Come. To-morrow, perhaps, you will find gold.”

Through the remaining weeks of the winter Hugh Edwards toiled with all his strength for the grains of yellow metal that the Indian secretly permitted him to find. Day and night the knowledge of the Mine with the Iron Door tortured him. Many times he was tempted to abandon all hope, and, by surrendering himself to the officers of the law, escape at least the torment of his strange situation. But always he was held by the one chance--to-morrow he might find the gold that meant freedom and Marta and love.

And at last, one day in spring, when the mountain slopes again were bright with blossoms--when the gold of the buckbean shone in the glades, and whispering bells were nodding in the shadows of the cañon walls--when the glory of the ocotillo, the flaming sword, was on the foothills, and “our Lord’s candles” again fit the mesas with their torches of white, Hugh Edwards looked up from his work in the gulch to see a stranger.