“Daddy,” says she, “Hugh has changed a lot since he come to us, ain’t he?”
“Daddy,” says she, “Hugh has changed a lot since he come to us, ain’t he?”
THE weeks of the spring passed. The gleaming snow fields vanished from the dark pine heights of Mount Lemmon. The creek, which ran through the Cañon of Gold with such boisterous strength that day when the stranger came and Marta talked with Saint Jimmy under the old cedar on the mountain side, crept lazily now, with scarce a murmur, pausing often to rest in the shady quiet of an overhanging rock or to sleep, half hidden, among the roots of a giant sycamore.
The Sonora pigeon, his mission accomplished, had long since ceased to give his mating call. The nest in the mesquite thicket had been filled and was empty again. The partridge was leading her half-grown covey far from the mescal plant where they were born. The vermilion flycatcher was too busy, with his exacting parental duties, even to think of indulging in those fantastic exhibitions which ultimately had placed the burdens of fatherhood upon his shoulders.
There was not a day of those passing months that the Pardners and their girl did not in some waycome in touch with their neighbor. Sometimes Edwards would go to counsel with the two old prospectors as they worked in their little mine. Again, they would go over to his place to advise him, with their years of experience, in his small operations. Often he would spend the evening with them on the porch in neighborly fashion, or they would go to smoke with him before the door of his tiny cabin. Occasionally, it was no more than a shout of greeting across the three hundred or more yards that separated the two places; but always the contact that had been established that day when the Lizard brought the stranger to the Pardners’ door was maintained.
Hugh Edwards might have gone from the place where he labored to the Pardners’ mine, along the creek under the high bank, without passing their house at all, but he never did. That is, he never both went and returned by the creek route. Either going or coming, he would always climb out of the deep cut made by the stream to the level of the main floor of the cañon where the house stood—except, of course, when Marta had gone to the store at Oracle or to see Saint Jimmy and Mother Burton.
The girl was always included, too, in those evenings on the porch or before his cabin door. Always, on her way to the store, she stopped to see if she could bring anything for him. And often, with the freedom of the rude environment she had known since she could remember, and with the frank innocence of her boyish nature, Marta would run over to give him a lesson in the arts of thekitchen; or, perhaps, to contribute something of her own cooking—a pie or cake or pudding—that would be quite beyond the range of his poor culinary skill. It was indeed all very natural—perhaps, as Thad had said that first day, it was too darned natural.
To the Pardners, Hugh Edwards was an object of continued speculative interest, a subject of endless and somewhat violent arguments; and, it must be added, a never-failing source of amusement and delight. The genuineness and depth of this friendship for their young neighbor was evidenced at last by their telling him the story of their partnership daughter as they had told it to Saint Jimmy and Mother Burton. It was not long after this mark of their confidence that the old prospectors were led into a characteristic discussion of their observations.
Hugh had gone to them at their mine with a bit of quartz which he had picked up in the bed of the creek. The consultation was over and the two old prospectors were sitting in the shade of the tunnel opening watching the younger man as he climbed up the steep bank toward the house. Old Bob was grinning.
“He sure thought he had found somethin’ good this time, didn’t he? The boy’s all right, don’t never show a sign of bein’ sore when his rich rocks turn out to be jest nothin’ but rock—jest keeps right on tryin’. Don’t seem to care a cuss how many blanks he draws.”
Thad chuckled:
“If hard work will get him anything, he’s sure due to strike it rich. Hits it up from crack of day ’til plumb dark an’ acts like he hated even to think of sleepin’ or eatin’.”
“It’s funny, too,” said Bob, “’cause you remember at first he didn’t ’pear to take no interest a-tall. Jest poked along in a come-day, go-day, God-send-Sunday sort of a gait, as if all he wanted was to git his powder back with what frijoles, bacon, and coffee he had to have. He’s sure come alive, though. I wonder——“
Thad was rubbing his bald head with a slow, speculative movement.
“Had you took notice how he allus goes up to the house when he brings them pieces of fool rock to us? My gal, she says to me the other evenin’——“
“Your gal! Your gal!” Marta’s father shouted. “This here’s my week, and you know it blamed well, you old love pirate, you. Can’t you never be satisfied with your share? Have you got to be allus tryin’ to euchre me out of my rights?”
“I apologize, Pardner, I forgot, I apologize plenty,” said Thad hurriedly. “As I was meanin’ to say, that gal of yourn, she says to me, ‘Daddy’—last Saturday it was, so she had a right to call me daddy—‘Daddy,’ says she, ‘Hugh has changed a lot since he come to us, ain’t he?’”
“Well,” returned Bob, “what if my daughter did make such a remark, it——“
“She was my daughter then,” interrupted Thad sternly.
“She’s mine right now,” retorted Bob with equal force. “What if she did say it? I maintain it only goes to show what a smart, observin’ gal she’s growed up to be.”
Thad grunted disgustedly.
“It’s almighty plain that she didn’t inherit none of her observin’ powers from you.”
Bob glared at him.
“Wal, what are you seein’ that I ain’t?” he demanded. “Somethin’ that’s wrong, I’ll bet—By smoke! Thad, if you was to happen to get into Heaven by any hook or crook so ever, you’d set yourself first off to suspicionin’ them there angels of high gradin’ the gold they say the streets up there is paved with.”
The other returned with withering contempt:
“You’ve said it! But don’t it signify nothin’ to you when your gal—when any gal takes notice of how a feller is lookin’ different from what he did when she first met up with him? Ain’t it got no meanin’ for you when she says, ‘Since he come to us’?Come to us—to us—can’t you see nothin’? If I was as dumb as you be, I’d set off a stick of powder under myself to see if I couldn’t get some sort of, what I heard Doctor Jimmy once call, a re-action.”
Bob laughed.
“I figger on gettin’ all the reactions I need from you, without wastin’ any powder. Hugh did come to us, didn’t he? Even if that measly Lizard did fetch him far as the gate.”
“Oh, sure,” grumbled the other with fine sarcasm. “Hugh, he didn’t come to this here Cañada del Oro—not a-tall—he jest come tous.”
Bob continued as if the other had not spoken:
“As far as his not bein’ the same as when he come, well, he ain’t—anybody can see that. ’Tain’t only that he’s started in to workin’, all at once, like he jest naterallyhadto get rich. He’s different in a lot of ways. Take his looks, for instance—he used to be kind of white like—you remember, and now he’s tanned as black as any of us old desert rats. He’s sturdier and heavier like, every way. Hard work agrees with him, ’pears like.”
“’Tain’t only that,” said Thad.
“Sure—his hair ain’t so short no more.”
“There’s more than hair an’ bein’ tanned,” said Thad.
“Yep, there is,” agreed Bob. “Do you mind how, when he first come, he acted sort of scared like—right at the very first, I mean.”
“That’s it,” returned Thad, “his eyes was like he was expectin’ one or t’other, or both of us, to throw down a gun on him. An’ yet I sensed somehow, after the first minute, that it wasn’t us he was afraid of. He sure walks up to a man now, though, like he could jump down his throat if he had to.”
“I’ll bet my pile he would, too, if he was called,” chuckled Bob. “And have you noticed how easy he laughs, an’ the way he sings and whistles over there when he’s fussin’ ’round his shack of a mornin’ or evenin’?”
“He sure seems contented enough,” said Thad, “an’ that’s another thing I’ve noticed, too,” he added slowly. “The boy ain’t been out of the cañon since he come.”
“Ain’t no reason for him to go,” said Bob. “We take out what little gold he pans with ourn, don’t we? An’ it’s easy for Marta to buy his supplies for him while she’s buyin’ for us. There ain’t nobody at Oracle that he’d be wantin’ to see.”
“Mebby that’s it,” said Thad.
“Mebby what’s it?” demanded Bob.
“That there ain’t nobody at Oracle that he wants to see—or that he don’t want to see him—whichever way you like to say it.”
“There you go again,” said Bob. “Can’t talk more’n a minute on any subject without hintin’ that somethin’ is wrong. The boy is all right, I tell you.”
“Well, Holy Cats! who said he wasn’t?” cried Thad. “I wouldn’t hold it against him much if he never went to Oracle or nowhere else; jest stuck in this here cañon ’til he died, hidin’ out in the brush somewhere every time anybody strange showed up nearer than George Wheeler’s. You an’ me has both suffered from the same sort of sickness more’n once, or I’m a-losin’ my memory. You’re allus makin’ out that I’m thinkin’ evil when I’m only jest tryin’ to look at things as they actually are. If I’d intimated that the boy was a hoss-thief or a claim-jumper or somethin’ like that, you’d have reason to climb on to me, but I’m likin’ him an’ believin’ in him as much as ever you or anybody else ever dared to.”
Bob grinned.
“It’s funny how we’re all agreed on that, ain’t it? He is sure a likable cuss. I was a-warnin’ him the other day about handlin’ his powder. ‘You don’t want to forgit, son,’ says I, ‘that there’s enough in one of them sticks to blow you so high that you’d think you was one of them heavenly bodies up yonder.’ He laughed an’ says, says he, ‘That bein’ the case, it would be mighty comfortin’ to know there was no one to dock me for the time I was up in the air, wouldn’t it?’”
“Huh!” grunted Thad, “that’s an old one.”
“Sure it’s an old one,” retorted Bob, “but nobody can’t say it ain’t a good one; and I’m here to maintain that you can tell a heap more about a man by the jokes he laughs at than you can by the religions he claims to believe in.”
“Yes,” retorted Thad grimly, “I’ve allus took notice, too, that them that’s all the time seein’ evil in whatever anybody does is dead immortal certain to be havin’ a lot of their own doin’s that need to be kept in the dark. As for this game of lookin’ for some sort of insinuations in everything a body says, it’s like a lookin’ glass—what you see is mostly yourself. That’s what I’m meanin’.”
“Hugh is a good boy all right,” said Bob.
“He’s all of that and then some,” said Thad.
The truth of the matter is, Hugh Edwards had found, in the Cañada del Oro, something more thanthe gold for which he worked so laboriously through the long days, and which he had come to hoard with such miserly care. In the Cañon of Gold, he had found more than rugged health; more than a sanctuary from whatever it was that had driven him from the world to which he belonged into the lonely seclusion of that wild country. Into his loneliness had come a sweet companionship that had grown every day more dear. In this new joy and gladness, bitterness and pain had ceased to darken his hours with hatred and with useless and vengeful longings. Crushed and beaten, humiliated and shamed, his every hour an hour of dread, he had found inspiration and spirit to plan his life anew. Out of his hopelessness, a glorious new hope had come. He had learned again to dream; and he had gained strength to labor for his dreams.
But he had not told Marta what it was that he had found. He could not tell her yet. Before he could tell her, he must have gold. And he must have, not merely an amount that would satisfy the bare necessities of life—he must have much more than that. He was not so foolish as to feel that he must be in a position to offer this girl the extravagant luxuries of life. But his need was born of a dire necessity—a necessity as vital as the need of food. Without gold, the realization of his dream was an impossibility. His only hope of happiness was in the possibility of his success in finding a quantity of the yellow metal for which, through the centuries, so many men had labored, as he was laboring now, inthe Cañon del Oro. He could not explain to Marta—he could only dream and hope and work, as those others before him had dreamed and hoped and worked in the Cañon of Gold. And so, with a strength that was like the strength of Saint Jimmy, this man was resolutely hiding the love that had re-created him. Marta must not know—not now.
But Marta knew—knew and yet did not know. The girl, whose womanhood had developed in the peculiarly sexless environment that had been hers since she could remember, had formed no habit of self-analysis. She was wholly inexperienced in those innocent but emotionally instructive friendships which girls and young women normally have with boys and men of their own age. Except for her fathers and Saint Jimmy, she had had no contact with men. In her childlike ignorance she asked of herself no questions. She gave no more thought to the meaning of her interest in Hugh Edwards than a wild bird gives to its mating instinct. But as their friendship grew and ripened, this girl of the desert and mountains knew that she was happy as she had never been happy before. She felt a kinship with the wild life about her that thrilled her with its poignant mystery. The flowers had never before bloomed in such passionate profusion. The birds had never voiced such melodies. The very winds were freighted with perfumes that filled her with strange delight. The days, indeed, flew by on wings of sunshine—the nights were haunted with shadowy promises as vague and intangible as they were sweet.
Natachee, as the weeks passed, seemed to develop a strange interest in the man who was so obviously from a world that is far indeed from the haunts of the lonely red man. Frequently the Indian called at the little cabin to spend an hour or more. Always he appeared suddenly, at the most unexpected moments, as if he were a spirit materialized that instant from an invisible world, and always he disappeared in the same startling fashion.
Sometimes, when he was with Edwards and the Pardners, he would discuss matters of general interest with the speech and manner of any well-bred college man. Save for his savage costume, his dusky countenance, and a certain touch of poetic feeling in his choice of words and figures of speech, there would be nothing, on these occasions, to mark him as different, in any way, from his white companions. But on other occasions, when Natachee and Edwards were alone, the red man would, for the moment, cast aside every mark of his training in the schools, and, with the voice, words, and gestures peculiar to his race, express thoughts and emotions that were purely Indian. Much of the time, however, he would sit silently watching the white man at his work. Often he would come and go without a word. He would sometimes appear, too, when Marta and Edwards were together, and on these occasions, save for a courteous greeting, he was rarely more than a silent observer.
The Lizard had at first endeavored to cultivate the stranger’s friendship, but, receiving no encouragement,had soon limited his attentions to a sullen “Howdy” when he passed on his way to or from Oracle.
But Saint Jimmy had not yet met the man who was living next door to Marta. Often the girl begged her teacher to go with her to call on the new neighbor. Mother Burton frequently scolded him, gently, for his discourtesy to the stranger. And Saint Jimmy promised many times that he would call, but he invariably postponed the date of his visit. He would set out on his social mission in all good faith, but invariably, when he came within sight of the cabin so near to Marta’s home, he would stop and, instead of going on, would spend the hours alone on the mountain side looking out over the desert. Had Saint Jimmy been other than the gentle spirit he was, he might have said that he heard quite enough about Hugh Edwards from Marta without going to visit him.
Many times, too, Saint Jimmy thought to tell Marta the story her fathers had intrusted to him, but for some reason he always found it as difficult to talk to his pupil about the mystery of her early childhood as he found it hard to call on this man in whom she was so interested.
Often he said to his mother that he would delay no longer—that he would tell the girl the next time she came to see them; but each time he put it off. The girl was always so radiantly happy, so overflowing with the joy of life. Perhaps, Saint Jimmy told himself, perhaps, it might never be necessary for her to know.
The dry season of the summer passed—the summer rains came; and again the desert, the foothills and mountain sides were bright with blossoms. It was during this “Little Spring,” as the Indians call this second blossoming time of the year, that Saint Jimmy finally called on Hugh Edwards.
And—it was the Lizard who brought it about.
“No,” said Doctor Burton, slowly, “I have heard nothing about Mr. Edwards. Nothing wrong, I mean.”
“No,” said Doctor Burton, slowly, “I have heard nothing about Mr. Edwards. Nothing wrong, I mean.”
THE Lizard was on his way to Oracle that day when he turned aside from the more direct trail to take the path that led past the little white house on the mountain side. Approaching the Burton home, he pulled his horse down to a walk, and, as he rode slowly up the winding way, his shifty eyes searched the vicinity on every side. It was not long before he saw Doctor Burton, who was seated, with his back comfortably against a rock in the shade of a Juniper tree, reading.
As the Lizard left the trail and rode toward him, Saint Jimmy glanced up from his book. With a look of mild interest, he watched as the horse with its rider climbed the steep side of the mountain.
When he had come quite near, the Lizard stopped, and slouching down in the saddle looked at the man seated on the ground with a wide grin, while the horse with a long breath of relief dropped his head and settled himself sleepily, as if understanding from long experience that his master would have no further use for him for some time to come.
“How do you do?” said Jimmy, smiling.
“’Bout as usual,” returned the horseman. “I’m eatin’ reg’lar. ’Lowed hit war time I rode by to see how you was a makin’ hit these days. I see ye’re still alive,” he laughed, in his loose-mouthed way.
“I am doing very well,” returned Saint Jimmy, wondering what the real object of the fellow’s call might be.
“Yer maw’s well too, I reckon?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Been over t’ Oracle lately?”
“I was there yesterday.”
“Uh-huh! I was up t’ the store myself day before. Hear anythin’ new, did ye?”
“Nothing startling,” smiled Saint Jimmy. “Your father and mother are well, are they?”
“’Bout as usual. Ain’t seed George Wheeler lately, have ye—er any of his folks?”
“George was at our house a few days ago,” returned Jimmy. “Stopped in a few minutes on his way home from the upper ranch.”
“Uh-huh!—George say anything, did he?”
“No. Nothing in particular.”
The Lizard shifted his slouching weight in the saddle. “I met up with one of George’s punchers t’other day. Bud Gordon, hit war. He says as how th’ lions is a-gettin’ ’bout all of George’s mule colts up ’round his place above.”
“So George was telling us. It’s too bad. You ranchers will be planning another hunt soon, I suppose.”
The Lizard shook his head solemnly, then leered at Saint Jimmy with an evil grin.
“Thar’s varmints in this here neighborhood what needs a-huntin’ a mighty sight more’n lions an’ coyotes an’ sich.”
Jimmy waited.
“You say you ain’t heerd nothin’?” demanded the Lizard.
“About what?”
“’Bout that there new prospector, what’s located in th’ old cabin down thar by th’ Pardners’ place.”
“No,” said Doctor Burton slowly. “I have heard nothing about Mr. Edwards—nothing wrong, I mean.”
“Wal, if ye ain’t, hit’s ’cause ye ain’t been ’round much, er ’cause ye ain’t listened very close. Mebby, though, folks would be kind o’ slow-like sayin’ anythin’ t’ you—seein’s how you’d likely be more interested ’n anybody else.”
Saint Jimmy was not smiling now.
“I think you are mistaken about my interest,” he said curtly. “I have no desire to listen to you or to any one else on the subject.”
“Oh, ye ain’t, heh?” the man on the horse returned with a sneer. “I ’lowed as how ye’d be mighty quick t’ listen, seein’ ’s how this new feller’s cut you out with th’ gal, like he has.”
When Saint Jimmy did not speak, the Lizard continued with virtuous indignation:
“Things was bad enough as they was, but now since this new feller’s come, she’s a-carryin’ on pastall reason. You kin find ’em t’gether at his shack er down in th’ creek whar he’s a-pretendin’ t’ work, er out in the brush somewhar ’most any time. An’ when she ain’t over t’ his place er out with him somewhar, he’s dead certain t’ be at her house. I seed them t’gether when I passed on my way up here. She’s too good t’ speak to me, what’s been neighbor t’ her ever since she come into this country, but she kin take up with this stranger quick enough.”
Doctor Burton was on his feet.
“That’s enough,” he said sharply. “You might as well go on your way now. You have evidently said what you came to say.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” returned the Lizard with insolent superiority. “There ain’t no use in yer tryin’ t’ be so high an’ mighty with me. She’s throwd me down fer you often enough. Now that yer gettin’ th’ same thing, ye ought t’ be a grain more friendly, ’pears t’ me. As fer this other feller, he’ll sure get what’s a-comin’ t’ him, an’ so will she.”
Jimmy caught his breath.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that folks ’re a-talkin’, an’ that they’ll likely do more than talk this time. We’ve allus had our doubts about th’ gal—who wouldn’t have—her bein’ raised by them two old mavericks like she war an’ bein’ named fer both an’ both claimin’ t’ be her daddy—an’ nobody knowin’ a foreign thing ’bout who her real paw an’ maw was, er even whether she ever had any. But folks has put up with her an’ you ’cause you was supposed to’ be a-teachin’ heran’ cause yer Saint Jimmy.” He laughed. “Saint Jimmy—mighty pretty, heh? But this new feller that’s got her now—Edwards, he calls hisself—he ain’t pretendin’ nothin’. Him an’ her, they——“
Doctor Burton started forward, his eyes were blazing and his voice rang:
“Shut up—if you open your foul mouth again, I’ll drag you from that horse and choke the dirty life out of you.”
The Lizard, amazed at the usually gentle-mannered Saint Jimmy, straightened himself in the saddle and caught up the reins.
“Get out!” continued the man on the ground. “Go find some filthy-minded scandalmonger like yourself to listen to your vile rot. I’ve had enough.”
The Lizard snarled down at him:
“If you warn’t a poor lunger, I’d——“
But as Saint Jimmy reached for him, he touched his horse with the spur, and the animal leaped away.
Twenty minutes later, Doctor Burton was on his way to the cabin in the cañon.
Marta was at home, sitting on the porch with her sewing, when her teacher rode down into the Cañon of Gold. She saw him as he turned aside toward the neighboring cabin, and was on the ground in time to introduce the two men.
“The Cañon of Gold is haunted by the ghosts of these disappointed ones. I, Natachee, know these things because I am an Indian.”
“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 anyhealthy-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 thegirl’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 ignoblevagabond 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 andwatching 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, hewished 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 thesequestions, 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.