VASQUEZ
Leaving Big John and Niltci hard at work making pemmican from the
cougar and deer meat, and bags of pinole or parched corn meal from corn
purchased at a near-by Apache encampment, Sid and Scotty rode a day’s
march through the mountains to where there was a mission school--San
Mateo of the Apaches. Scotty’s idea was to get the Red Mesa tablet
translated by the teacher, who no doubt still remembered his Latin.
A small adobe schoolhouse of primitive Spanish architecture came in
sight shortly after noon, surmounting a little knoll in the mountains.
As they rode toward it Indian children, boys and girls, came running
and yelling around them to beg pennies, and with them as an escort they
rode up to the hitching rail before the school, dismounted and entered.
A lone Mexican teacher, poor and of uncertain temper apparently, sat
reading at the school desk as they entered. With an annoyed exclamation
in Spanish he put down his book and came toward them during the time
that their eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim light of the
interior of the building.
“And what can I do for the señores?” inquired the man suspiciously,
after the usual polite Spanish greetings had been exchanged.
Sid had already sized him up with a sense of misgiving, even then,
before a word of their object had been disclosed. The Mexican--his
nationality oozed out all over him--was a little weazened man, dirty,
old, with one eye drooping nearly shut from some violent slash gotten
during his past history. His face bore a sardonic, cynical, rascally
expression, even under the smooth suavity of the crooked smile that now
leered upon them. Sid felt like taking Scotty’s arm and leading him
away, right then and there! Surely this man was no one to trust with
such a mining secret as might be written on the Red Mesa tablet.
But Scotty had already guilelessly begun explaining their visit. His
simple, “We have a Latin inscription here, señor, that we would like
you to translate for us,” had settled it, for the man was already
holding out his hand for the plaque which Scotty bore.
“You understand Latin, señor?” put in Sid, hoping that he didn’t.
“Vasquez,” supplied the Mexican, “ees my name. For the Latin,
_si!_--indifferently,” he shrugged. “Anything that my poor efforts can
do to help you, though--” Once more he held out his hand for the plaque.
Again Sid felt that queer inner warning not to let the matter go
further. He disliked any man who depreciated his own worth with every
other word. Due modesty was admirable, but this groveling disdain of
one’s self was in truth but the inevitable expression of a fundamental
lack of esteem for one’s own integrity--and that usually came from a
guilty conscience.
But it was too late now. Before Sid could obey a mad impulse to snatch
the tablet away--no matter what explanations might be needed--no matter
how absurd and incomprehensible and rude it might seem--the Mexican had
begun reading the script on the pottery.
“D.O.M.--Deo Optimo Maximo,” he rolled out in the sonorous Latin
tongue. That was as far as he got in reading it out aloud to the boys.
For, immediately thereafter, an expression of amazed, puzzled surprise
came into his eyes as the boys watched him reading over the script
to himself. Then Sid noted intense concentration, and this gradually
gave way to an expression of crafty cupidity, an air of envisioning
something other than the words that his eyes were falling on, of
planning big enterprise, great affairs in connection with this tablet.
Vasquez went on to read the script entirely through in a still, tense
silence. Before he had finished, those snaky black eyes of his were
fairly blazing with avarice. Talk of the power of the word “gold” to
excite man! This man’s primitive nature stood stripped before the boys;
revealed was an elemental desire for possession before which the rights
of others, the entire veneer of civilization were stricken off as
phantoms. He might as well have been some Mexican greaser griping at a
pile of gold on some disreputable faro table along the border!
As Sid watched, the face before him looked up. Instantly it went blank,
expressionless. There was a period of reflection, while the boys waited
expectantly, then a crafty, planning look came into the eyes.
He folded the plaque under his arm--gesture of possession, which we are
told, is nine points of the law.
Vasquez smiled--a practical declaration of ownership--a maddening,
infuriating smile; the superior smile of the older man toward youth,
which seems to question the right of the young man to busy himself with
anything at all but the toys of childhood. Sid found it particularly
unbearable. He had been smiled at that way before, when some staid and
sophisticated professor had smiled indulgently at him over some of his
own theories in Indian ethnology, theories which Sid propounded with
all the fire of his youthful enthusiasm and conviction.
“Caballeros,” said the Mexican craftily, “this matter can have no
possible interest to you, since it happens to refer to the work of
the missionary brothers among the--ah, the Papagoes--” he hesitated,
referring to the script as if to refresh his memory, his thought
evidently being that the boys might have recognized that word in the
Latin. “Over two hundred years ago this--ah, yes, missionary matter it
is, my young friends--was written concerning our poor red brothers who
lived down near Pinacate,” Vasquez smiled down at them suavely.
Sid glanced at Scotty. The latter’s Scotch nature was so incensed
over this bald smiling perversion of what even his limited knowledge
of Latin had told him was the truth that he was utterly speechless.
“_Minem Argenti_” indeed! That meant “silver mine” at any rate!
Scotty’s faced blazed red, his eyes burned blue fire. As for Sid, he
saw no use in prolonging this conversation further, for in craft the
Mexican was more than his match. Boylike he preferred direct action.
“Sorry that I can’t see it that way, señor,” he replied shortly,
gulping down his indignation. “I should be glad to furnish you with a
copy of this tablet for your archives, if you wish,” he conceded, “but
that original plaque is mine.”
He held out his hand for it with a gesture that told he was not to be
trifled with further. Vasquez looked around desperately. Give him a
moment more and he would think up some smooth reply that would at least
gain time, perhaps argue the thing out of their very hands! But Sid
made a determined lunge for him as the Mexican backed away.
At once the man raised his voice in a hoarse scream, “_Ladrones!
Gringoes!_” he yelled, fending off Sid with a push of his hand while he
turned the side with the plaque under his arm away from them. Then he
ran for a door at the back of the school. Shrill yells and the shouts
of Apache came in answer to his call from outside. There was not a
second further to lose! Scotty sprang for the man, lunging low in the
football tackle for his legs, while Sid with a fierce and accurate
grip of his strong hands tore the plaque away from under his arm, the
scuffle sending the three rolling together in a heap on the dirt floor
of the church.
“Quick! Make for that rear door!” barked Sid as he and Scotty leaped
to their feet. Vasquez squirmed on the dirt floor of the schoolhouse,
cursing horribly in Spanish and rocking to and fro as he hugged a
sprained ankle. If looks could kill, the malignant fire that darted
from his snaky eyes would have paralyzed them both! Sid raced for the
rear door while Scotty stood guard over the man with threatening fists.
The patter of running feet sounded outside the ’dobe walls. Then a
leggined Apache, with long, matted black hair, stood blinking in at
them in the blazing square of sunlight that was the front door.
Sid had reached the back door. He looked in, then beckoned Scotty to
join him. The boy raced over and, once inside the room, both boys
slammed the stout panels behind them and let drop a heavy oak beam.
“There’s a small window, with a mesquite bush growing out in front of
it, Scotty--give me a stirrup hold!” gasped Sid, who was breathing
heavily from their tussle.
He stepped up in Scotty’s clasped hands and peered out the window,
with one arm crooked over the edge. A mesquite grew just outside, and
it was so heavily laden with dense clumps of mistletoe as to be in a
dying state. Sid figured they might climb out into it and remain there
undiscovered among the mistletoe clumps for a few moments. Outside he
saw three or four Apache bucks running toward the schoolhouse from
the grass huts perched upon the hillside. All over the village he
heard an indescribable commotion of children and squealing squaws, but
the Indians had no idea of what really was the matter. So far only
Vasquez’s screech for help had come to their ears.
Sid climbed out through the window and then reached down his arms
to help Scotty up to its sill. An uproar and a drumming of fists
and impotent squalls in Spanish was sounding outside the oak door
of the room as they both climbed out and gained the shelter of the
mesquite. As the last buck outside ran into the school, Sid dropped to
the ground and the boys raced for their horses. An outcry of Indian
children greeted the appearance of the two fugitives, but none offered
to interfere; only one little shaver had the presence of mind to run
shrieking to the school door while Sid and Scotty were swinging up into
their saddles.
“Now ride, Scotty, old scout--these Apache can _run_!” grunted Sid,
hanging low over his pinto and putting spurs to him. Scotty’s mare had
no idea of letting that pinto leave her, so they galloped away from San
Mateo together, leaving behind a cloud of dust and a riot of angry war
whoops from the red men piling out of the schoolhouse.
Sid’s caution as to the running abilities of the Apache was entirely
true. Behind them streaked out two lean and sinewy bucks, who had raced
out of the school door and were coming after them like arrows. What was
more surprising was the way they kept up that speed. The mare and the
pinto were going like the wind, but not a yard did those Indians on
foot behind them seem to lose! There was not a horse save their own in
sight. But three men and a swarm of children were already running down
the hill to where the ragged poles of a horse corral and the glint of a
watering pond near by shimmered in the broiling sun. Even barebacked it
would be some time yet before these could join in the chase, but when
it was once begun it would be tireless.
Not a word passed between the boys. Both were watching sharp ahead for
prairie dog holes and urging on their ponies at top gallop. If they
could outrun those two bucks behind them for half a mile they would
have passed the limits of even Apache endurance. Indeed, before half
the distance between them and the friendly hills had passed, they
saw first one, then the other, give up, with arms tossed up in weary
abandon, as both bucks threw themselves panting on the bare plain. Sid
and Scotty then let their ponies ride on at their own stride. It was
well to have an extra spurt left in them to call on, even yet!
“Mucho bad, Sid; look back!” said Scotty, a short time after the menace
of the foot-racers had disappeared and the two bucks had risen and
begun slowly to retrace their steps back to the school. Sid turned
half around in his saddle. Out from the high ’dobe façade of San Mateo
were riding four horsemen and their leader was swathed in a gaudy
striped Mexican serapé. Surely he was that rascally Vasquez. And he
would follow them until doomsday for the Red Mesa tablet!
“The whole thing’s bad, Scotty,” replied Sid. “This fellow knows now
what’s written on the tablet. Nothing can take that knowledge away
from him, either. We’ve got the plaque; but _he_ has the knowledge it
contains--and I’ll bet it’s indelible in his mind! They’ll never catch
us with those Indian ponies, but what’s to prevent his reporting this
Red Mesa mine to friends of his down in Mexico? What then?--you can
have my shirt if a squad of their guerrillas doesn’t cross the border,
pronto, and get to Red Mesa first! See it? That’s where we get off. I
doubt if this fellow will follow us very hard. He knows all he needs to
know right now.”
Scotty rode on in silence. Indeed this business _had_ been bungled!
Far better would it have been for them to have ridden into Tucson and
gotten some scientist whom Sid knew and could trust to read the Latin
for them. The very word “Gold” is bad medicine to let get abroad among
the sons of men! Many a miner’s stampede has been started on less.
As the trail reached the foothills they drew rein and looked back. Far
across the plain that little knot of horsemen was still coming on in
the tireless lope of the Indian pony. Give them twenty miles of it and
their own horses would be run off their feet!
“Here’s where we’ve got to step light and easy, old-timer!” grinned
Sid. “The Indians will be in their own country in these hills, and they
know every short cut to head us off. I wish Big John and Niltci were
here.”
Scotty growled assent abstractedly as they rode up a bare and rocky
arroyo. He was thinking of all that this Red Mesa mine meant to him.
If it really existed, its nearness to the sea made the engineering
problems of it so simple that it would be easy to get capital invested
in it. Las Pintas mines, only thirty miles south of Pinacate, had
already established a successful precedent for that, for it now had a
little railroad of its own and a ship base, just as the young engineer
had dreamed for Red Mesa. But now that Red Mesa’s location was known to
outsiders--and after being buried two hundred years, too!--the whole
thing was a mess, and of his own naïve making. The curse of trustful
youth! There was just one point of hope. According to government
regulations, whoever got there first and staked out a claim owned Red
Mesa, now matter how discovered.
Scotty raged inwardly over it, driving his mare hard under that
maddening goad of chagrin. Sid, who was less interested, followed
phlegmatically behind. As the trail reached up high on the flanks of
the mountains and headed up over a “saddle” into the next valley,
Scotty rode ahead, dismounted and began climbing rapidly up toward
the saw-teeth ridges that hung low in the sky above him. A persistent
suspicion had haunted him ever since this ride had begun, and now he
wanted that suspicion verified or dispelled.
As Sid passed below him then halted his pinto and waited, Scotty
climbed on up and soon was peering through a ragged granite gap in
the ridge. Below him fell away the bare, sage-strewn slopes and the
low ridges of the foothills. Beyond that the great sun-baked plain of
San Mateo lay like a floor. Up on its lonely hill, dim, in the blue
distance, rose the school, yellow, and as Spanish as old Mexico. A mass
of green around it told of water and of its permanent Apache colony.
Scotty then searched the plain for signs of their pursuers. At
first he thought they had followed them into the mountains, for the
plain below was bare as a table. Then he drew back, with a shock of
intense discouragement and misgiving, for his eyes had at last found
them--riding along under the foothills, toward the _south!_ There
were two of the Indians following Vasquez who was quirting his pony
mercilessly. The third Apache had disappeared.
“Gee!” groaned the boy anxiously. “He’s riding south! Toward the
railroad! That means a telegram as soon as he can send one. And the
third Indian is following _us_!”
He scrambled down and told Sid his news.
“Kick me for a rank tenderfoot, Sid!” he groaned. “Kick me from here
back to camp, and then kick me clear on down to Pinacate! Gorry, but I
let the cat out that time!”
Sid grinned. “Buck up, old settler!” he cheered him. “I knew we were in
wrong as soon as I saw that greaser schoolmaster. To give the Red Mesa
plaque to some benign old priest to read, yes; but this bird was just
a sinful man like the rest of us. The temptation proved too strong for
him. Gee, but you handed him our dope, as innocent as innocent! Whee!
Big John’ll think up something to do about it, though, and if he don’t
we will. Remember, too, that Mexico is the land of _mañana_. I doubt
if they even get any one started up from Sonora before we can make a
fast push and get there first, old scout, so don’t worry. Besides,
they can’t cross the border, unless a party of guerrillas does it.
And--they’d have a lot of explaining to do to get the grant of a claim
from the government unless regularly entered as immigrants through
Nogales--which is further from Red Mesa than we are. Our job, now, is
to keep an eye on this third Indian. He was sent after us as a spy, to
keep track of us and report, you can depend on that. We’ll send Niltci
after _him_.”
Scotty rode on, more hopeful. Sid’s rugged cheerfulness was what he
always needed to brace him up. The one strong note in his character was
his indomitable Scotch persistence. He never let go a thing once his
mind was set on it, but he was easily disheartened and set back, for he
had yet to learn that nine-tenths of our troubles exist solely in our
imaginations.
It was nightfall when they reached camp. Not a sign had they seen of
the third Indian, lurking in the hills somewhere behind them. That he
had seen _them_ was quite to be believed; he was probably watching
their entry into camp at that very moment!
Big John hee-hawed when the boys told their story; then he jumped up,
cackling hideously, grabbed Scotty and booted him all around the camp.
“Thar!--Ye pisen li’l, ornery, horned toad!--Gol-darn ye--anyhow!” he
guffawed, administering that kicking that Scotty had begged for but
Sid had overlooked. “You boys ain’t satisfied with draggin’ me down
to a country glowerin’ with petrified lava, but ye got to add to my
troubles by ringin’ in a bunch of greasers on me! I tell ye what,
Scotty, Pinacate means, ‘Bug-that-stands-on-his-haid,’ in Papago
talk, an’ durned ef I don’t stand ye on _yore_ haid, ef we don’t
find no mine--an’ we won’t! Up you goes by the heels, I’ll be plumb
hornswoggled ef I don’t do it!”
“Yeeow--attaboy!” yelled Sid, enthusiastically. “Well, how come? We’ve
got to shake off this Apache, first, or he’ll follow us clear down to
Pinacate. What’s the word, John?”
“My idee’s to do a leetle night ridin’, son--and sorter leave Niltci
behind,” grinned Big John enigmatically. “Might’s well be rollin’ yore
blankets right now, boys. The jerky’s all done and Niltci’s got it
pickled away in a bunch of parfléche skins.”
That night the four horses, with Ruler and Blaze on rawhide leaders,
pulled out of camp in the silence and gloom after dusk. One horse,
Niltci’s flea-bitten mustang, was led riderless, his halter tied to the
tail of Sid’s pinto. The white mustang that bore Big John’s long frame
started ahead up the trail, a guide barely distinguishable in the faint
light of the big Arizona stars. Black and inky buttes, jagged peaks and
swelling ridges passed them in a slow procession around the horizon
while Big John led on, stopping occasionally on the trail to reassure
himself by some blazed stake set up in a cairn of stones or a rude
corner of weathered granite rocks marking a turning point in the route.
The sun rose over the range of mountains left behind them next morning
as the pack train wound down through the last pass in the hills and
crossed the railroad track above Tucson. The horses were watered at a
little river near the tracks, a river that was bravely hurrying on to
its fate, to disappear forever in the thirsty sands of the desert to
the north. Bare and rocky hills confronted them across the valley. As
they headed into them Sid turned and looked back. A lone rider came
galloping after them like a black speck hurrying out of the ranges
across the valley. The whole party halted waiting for the rider,
whether friend or foe.
It was Niltci, the Navaho, flinging along Indian fashion on a pony, his
elbows flopping jerkily, his whole body swaying with the loose abandon
of a rag tied somehow to the saddle.
“Well?” said Sid, as the Navaho boy overtook them, “what’s become of
Vasquez’s Apache scout?”
Niltci’s bronze face cracked once in a saturnine grin. “_Quien sabe?_”
(Who knows!) he shrugged his dusty shoulders. “Me got hees pony!” That
was all they ever had out of him about it.
“Them thar rails says we gotta lope along pronto, boys!” said Big
John as he pushed the white mustang to the head of the column. “Yore
schoolmarm friend has gone by hyar, in the cyars, shore’s yore a foot
high. ’Cause why? I didn’t see no pony tracks headin’ down fer Tucson,
nohow, comin’ down this valley.”
“Think he’s gone to Nogales, by train, John?” asked Scotty anxiously.
“Shore has! Or else he’s takin’ the jerkwater local out of Tucson to
San Xavier, so he can reach the Papago Reservation ahead of us. We’ll
be crossin’ thet Injun ole folks’ home soon as we git out’n these hills
an’ we’ll shore hev trouble!”
Big John shook his head ominously and urged on the white mustang. For
him the race for Red Mesa had already begun.
“Yes, but the Papagoes are harmless,” objected Scotty.
“Not this time of year!” put in Sid. “This is corn time with them,
and every other buck is drunk on a ferment that they make of it. That
Vasquez could arouse them to almost anything, now.--Hey, John?”
“Shore, them Injuns is bad medicine for all white men in November!”
quoth Big John sententiously.
They rode on in silence. A row ahead was tolerably certain, Sid
thought. If Vasquez had reached them first by the railroad they would
probably get a hot reception!
Two hours later their cavalcade filed out of the mountains and headed
across a wide and hot plain. It was like riding into an entirely new
world. Odd twisted and contorted cactus vegetation now covered the
desert. Every plant and tree was different from anything the boys
had ever seen before. Even the mountains were different, for instead
of having the usual foothills they rose, gray and jagged and bare in
the blue sky, abruptly from a flat and sandy floor. A faint tinge of
green on their sides showed that the queer vegetation of this arboreal
desert climbed up for a considerable distance even on that dry and
inhospitable soil.
In front of them stretched a wide and flat plain, clear to the bases
of the distant gray mountains. Sparse galleta grass and patches of
gray sand dotted with creosote bushes covered it. There were clumps
of mesquite, looking like dwarfed and twisted locust trees; here and
there a bright green patch which, on riding closer, developed on to a
_palo verde_, its bright green branches and twigs a dense lacery of
glistening green. Sid rose close to one, looking for its leaves for
apparently it had none. They were infinitesimal, spiky little things,
adding nothing to its beauty, which he saw came entirely from the _palo
verde’s_ masses of sap-green branches.
As they rode further to the southwest, multitudes of what looked like
tall green fence posts appeared. They covered the ridges, each as
straight as a lance and as thick as a tree. They were small saguarro
or giant cactus, ribbed and pleated in green, and covered with thorns.
Further west they grew larger and put forth branches like huge
candelabra.
To Sid’s naturalist soul all this arboreal desert was weird and
beautiful and interesting. The tree choya, a clubby specimen with stiff
branches of thorn bristles at the ends of crooked branches, began to
appear; then the ocatilla, the “Devil’s Chair,” as Big John called it,
a tree with no trunk but with more arms than an octopus and each branch
covered with thorns and small green leaves bunched along a green stem
as hard as iron.
Towards evening, across the gray-green miles, a small brown _visita_
or mission outpost came to view. It was merely a large hut of adobe,
but the bell in its upper tower told its purpose instantly. The boys
thrilled as they looked at it, for they were now nearing the Papago
Reservation and it was quite possible that Vasquez had forestalled them
by train from Tucson.
Big John reined in the white mustang. “Nobody to home, thar, these
days,” quoth he. “The Injuns is all away at the cornfields. We gotto
ride in thar though, an’ help ourselves to water afore these hosses
kin go further.”
Sid would have preferred to keep away, but there was no choice.
Water was king in this country! They _had_ to get it, if it meant
encountering a thousand malignant school-teachers. Vasquez’s subtle
Spanish mind had no doubt led him to reason that they _must_ come here.
But what redskin reinforcements he might have picked up in that lonely
mission station imagination could not conjecture.
Slowly the miles lessened; the building loomed up brown and enigmatical
in the setting sun before them. ’Dobe houses, each with a mesquite
pole veranda in front, appeared like magic among the green stakes of
saguarros on the hillsides; then a round stone oven out in the valley
near the schoolhouse became plain to sight.
They were perhaps yet a mile away when around the corner of the
building appeared a man on horseback. A cape or serapé of some sort
hung over his shoulders, but it was too far away to get any sense of
color from it. Niltci squinted his keen eyes and gazed at him long and
fixedly while the others reined up.
“Mexicano!” he ejaculated.
“Sho’ is!” agreed Big John. “I’ll bet my hoss it’s that bird who tried
to steal your tablet, boys!”
Sid and Scotty fumbled for their hunting binoculars. A moment later
they had trained them on the man.
“It’s _him_, John, all right!” cried Sid. “_Now_ what do we do?”
The rider in the serapé answered that question himself, for, wheeling
his horse, he galloped off at full speed.
“Ride, fellers! Burn it up!” roared Big John. “We got about _no_ time
to git in thar an’ water our hosses. He’ll be back, right sudden, with
the hull b’ilin’ of drunken Injuns!”