CHAPTER IX

“GOLD IS WHERE YOU FIND IT”

“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.”

The Cañon of Gold was still in the shadow of the mountains the next morning when the Pardners went to give their new neighbor his first lesson in the work that was to occupy him for months to come.

Hugh Edwards greeted them without a trace of the hesitating fear that he had shown during the first moments of their meeting, the day before. His eyes now met theirs fairly, with no hint of questioning dread. It was as if the restful peace and strengthening quiet of that retreat which was hidden so far from the overcrowded highways of life had begun already to effect, in the troubled spirit of this stranger, a magic healing.

“Well,” said Thad gruffly, “we’re here--where’s your pick an’ shovel an’ pan?”

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.”