OUT OF THE DESERT
As Sid’s scattered wits returned to connected thought, after the first
few moments following that stunning detonation, his mind and his hopes
went out first to Scotty. How _could_ he and the Apaches down there
have survived, right in the storm center of that explosion? For a time
he dared not even call out, nor was there the least sound of human
beings alive down there to reassure him. Not even a faint groan came up
to his listening ears.
Still there was at least a ray of hope. That white glare of the
explosion had come out like the flare from the mouth of a cannon. The
tunnel, in fact, _was_ a vast stone cannon. Vasquez, true to Sid’s
diagnosis of the Latin mind, had planned his coup logically, had thrown
the bundle of dynamite sticks fair and true right into the mouth of the
cave where it would do the most damage. But he had not reckoned on the
laws of mechanics, the immutable principles of action and reaction.
For the forces of that explosion had blown right back upon him who had
thrown the charge. It had rent him to bits, and Sid had seen enough to
be sure that the victim had been the rash Vasquez himself.
Was there not a hope, then, that Scotty and the Apaches, standing to
one side of the direct blast, had survived it? A man can stand near
the muzzle of a twelve-inch naval gun and yet not be hurt, beyond the
temporary shock to ears and nerves.
In spite of the appalling stillness which kept up, Sid found courage at
last to call out.
“Scotty! Leslie, old chum!--Are you still alive?” his voice quavered
out into the night.
There was a moment of anxious waiting. Then: “Hi!--Don’t worry,
Sid! We’re all right!” called up Scotty’s voice in a peculiar dead
inflection, for his ears were evidently numb. “The thing went off like
a cannon. Only Vasquez himself, who was in the direct line of it, got
killed. We’re all shaken up some, but nothing serious.”
Sid whooped with joy. Never till then did he realize how deep was
his affection for Scotty--that enduring bond that a mere temporary
difference could affect only superficially.
“The cave mouth’s shattered, but I think we can pick it loose,” came
Scotty’s voice more strongly after a time.
Presently the watch-fire flared up again and there came sounds of men
heaving and working and the crash of stones tumbling down the lava
apron.
Then: “Yeaay--Sid!... Listen! She’s all right! She’s clear! I’m coming
right up!” yelled Scotty’s voice, and there were muffled voices of men
entering the cave.
Honanta and Scotty joined them on the apron ledge shortly after. Sid
felt a deep restful sense of thankfulness now that it was all over. The
menace of starvation for Red Mesa was gone; Vasquez, the only other
person who knew about the mine, could do no more harm. He wanted to
sleep now, and sleep well. After that, a last appeal to Scotty in which
Big John, he was sure, would join him. After mutual congratulations
had been exchanged he got his bed roll and laid it out beside Big
John’s cot, thoroughly tired and relaxed. The cowman was sleeping
peacefully. After that glad hail of Scotty’s, Nurse Nature had claimed
him immediately!
It was not until morning that the real disaster to Red Mesa became
known. A cry from one of the squaws awoke Sid. He rolled sleepily out
of his blankets, to find her pointing excitedly at the lava basin of
the tank. It was half empty!
Down at least six feet below the rim was now the level of the water, as
Sid stared at it unbelievingly. It was all too cruel to sense at first;
too great an irony of fate for the human mind to comprehend. But, after
the first interval of stupefaction, Sid understood what had happened.
That explosion had opened a fissure in the lava bottom of the tank--and
Red Mesa was slowly bleeding to death! A rush to the rim of the basin
confirmed it. There, down along one edge of the apron, a thin trickle
of water was flowing silent, unceasingly sapping away the life blood of
his ideal Indian community, giving their precious indispensable water
to those thirsty sands of the desert drinking it up far below!
What a thing is puny man! Armed with the unlimited strength of
dynamite, _one man_ had done all this; destroyed at a blow all living
things that flourished here, upset the huge yet delicate balance of
Nature, driven into a wandering exile a once happy people.
A great sob rose in Sid’s throat as what all this meant came over him
in an overwhelming wave of emotion. What Scotty _might_ have done in
leading here the slow advance of civilization, that villain Vasquez had
brought about in one mad moment of callous cupidity. Sid ground his
teeth in helpless rage. Then he turned and raced for Scotty’s bunk up
near the mine. He, the engineer--he could stop this catastrophe if any
one could!
Already, as he passed, he could see the bottom of the tank, dim and
muddy below the fast vanishing level of the water. Around its edges
Apache women were wailing and wringing their hands, some drawing water
while any yet remained. Honanta and his braves had gathered and stood
looking down at the tank in stolid perplexity, helpless, knowing not
how or why this cruel thing was happening, nor what to do.
“Wake, Scotty! Quick! Our water’s all going from the tank! Help us, old
man--hurry!” shouted Sid wildly, shaking him.
Scotty sat up, and immediately his eyes fell on water level, now far
down in the lava basin, the pool itself shrunk to half its normal size.
“That explosion must have cracked a fissure open somewhere, last
night,” said Sid. “Only look, Les!” he groaned.
Scotty pulled on his boots rapidly. “No use trying to stop it from
below, Sid,” he declared with the sure knowledge of the engineer. “The
water head would burst any dam we could build down there. We’ve got to
find the crack in the bottom up here and stop it. All hands into the
tank!” he cried energetically.
Sid waved his arm to Honanta and his bucks to jump in and join in
the search for the leak, but they stood back, arms folded, eying him
gloomily. Childlike, in many ways, is the Indian mind! Before anything
whose cause they cannot reason out they stand helpless. Only Niltci
followed Sid and Scotty into the water, and that from blind obedience.
“Hunt for a hole in the tank bottom, Niltci!--Hunt for all your worth!”
ordered Sid, handing him a stick as they waded about the pool. Its
water was now less than three feet deep, the bottom smooth and slippery
with mud. Somewhere down there a crevice, maybe only an inch wide, was
drawing down the water--but where! The bottom was smooth and hard as
flint; nowhere did the searching sticks find any crack that had no
bottom.
Scotty’s face grew more and more concerned as they reached the end of
the tank away from the lava outflow. Here it grew deeper and the bottom
was all ragged pot holes of scoriated lava. Here gases had forced their
way out from below while yet the molten stuff was soft. His stick felt
down into deep jagged holes and could tell him nothing as to whether a
fissure existed at the bottom of them or not.
In spite of his forced air of cheerfulness the outlook grew more and
more hopeless. Somewhere down here was the leak, but where? Finally he
came to a deep jagged pot-hole which swallowed his stick and more--down
to the limit of his armpits. He sent Niltci for a pole, his face drawn
with anxiety, for failure as an engineer, utter and complete, was
now staring him in the face. When it arrived it went down into that
pot-hole its full depth, to touch only ragged scoriations of lava, at
the bottoms of any one of which might be the fissure.
“Sid, we’re done!” cried Scotty, hopelessly, tears starting from his
eyes. “Only concrete and lots of it can fix this! Oh, Sid, I’d give
anything in the world to be able to help them!” wept Scotty, prodding
futilely with his pole in a mechanical effort to relieve the stress
in his mind. “They must all go! All this must die!”--waving his arm
around at the green and flowering things that made the valley gracious.
“You were right, Sid! This is the object lesson I needed--gorry, but I
needed it in all my visionary pride! This is what I would have done to
Honanta’s people, only in another way. The pity of it! I see it now--I
don’t _want_ their mine--at such a price!”
“Isn’t there anything we can _do_?” barked Sid rebelliously. “Throw in
rocks--dirt--skins--_anything_ to stop it!”
Scotty shook his head mournfully.
“We’d be too late--look at the water now!”
At once the hopelessness of it all overtook even Sid’s buoyant nature.
The water was now only two feet deep and a wide area of glistening mud
swept down from the brink. The edges of it had already dried in the
desert air.
Sid waded out and faced Honanta, shaking his head solemnly.
“My son, why did the white man do this cruel thing?” asked the chief,
his deep voice filled with gentle rebuke. “My people must wander forth,
now--I know not where.”
“Because he wanted your mine, Honanta!” gritted Sid passionately, over
the injustice of it all. “To get it for himself he hoped to lock us
all up here, to die of starvation, like the people of the Enchanted
Mesa. And now look how it has turned out! I stand here--ashamed,
Honanta--ashamed of my race!”
“_Take_ your mine! It is always so when the white man finds gold! All
this must die! The red man must go!”
“No!” barked Scotty wildly through his tears. “No, chief! You won’t
have to go! Concrete can fix it! As soon as the water is gone we shall
get at the crack and seal it. We’ll mend the basin and then leave you
in peace forever. I promise it, here and now! Never, never shall any
mention of your mine cross my lips!”
“My son, many, many rains it took to fill that tank! My people were
careful to use each year no more than the Great Mystery saw fit to send
us. We have done no wrong, yet is the face of the Great Mystery hid
behind a cloud. We must go forth!” sighed Honanta.
He turned to his old men and gave an order. Immediately the whole
village became the scene of busy preparations for the march. Sid
watched them with tears in his eyes, while Scotty protested vainly
to Honanta. Where could they go? To Tinajas Atlas, perhaps, there to
hide in some rocky fastness of the desert, forced to fetch water from
long distances and sooner or later to be discovered at the tank by our
border rangers, rounded up and sent back to the reservation.
It must not be! He and Scotty had brought all this upon them; it was
their responsibility to see to it that another and a better home should
be found for them. Perhaps Scotty was right, in the long run. If they
could retain control of this mine and operate it successfully, there
would be money enough to repay Honanta forever.
By noon the village reported ready for the march. Men, women, and
children, they would go forth on foot into the pitiless desert, and
somehow, through untold sufferings, incredible endurance, would make
that march to a new home--but it could never, never, approach the
freedom and peace of this spot, the Arms of the Great Mystery!
Towards its high red walls Honanta now raised his hands in silent
prayer and farewell. Soon it would become a sun-baked, scorched, arid
ruin, the home of saguarro and choya, a place that no one but white men
would want. With its empty, bare and mud-caked basin, that once held
smiling and life-giving water--Red Mesa was dead.
Sid looked on, so overcome with sympathy that he had not given their
own problems a thought. Yet, with the last of the water, they too would
face the pitiless scourge of thirst. Big John would have to be moved to
Papago Tanks, somehow. But all that could wait.
“Good-by, white boy!” said Honanta, coming up to grip his hand
strongly. “Tell your father that, some day, I will visit him--when my
people are provided for.”
He turned to give the order to march.
Who sneers at coincidences? They happen to us daily, in those abrupt
meetings of chance whose obscure workings of cause and effect we know
nothing of, nor can trace. One happened now; for, as Honanta had raised
his head to give the order, at that instant there came a hail from Big
John on his cot on the apron brink.
“Hi, Sid!--Say!--Hyar comes yore _daddy_!--An’ that Apache feller!” he
sang out. For a moment Sid stood looking at him in sheer amazement. Had
Big John gone delirious? How and why had Colonel Colvin come here? But
if it was really, truly so----
“Wait, Honanta! Wait!--You _shall_ see my father, and your own son,
sooner than any of us expected!--Wait!” cried Sid, running after the
chief to seize his arm.
With Sid, unable to comprehend how or why his father could actually be
here, they went together along the empty tank to the apron brim.
But it was true! Down there on the sands of the valley two riders were
coming, and Honanta gave a great cry as his keen eyes recognized the
smaller of the two.
“Hano!--My son! My _son_!” he yelled, his stoic Indian reserve broken
down by the intensity of the moment.
Sid waved energetically to the other rider whose thick-set figure told
that he was an older man, undoubtedly Colonel Colvin himself.
Presently a hail came from them both, and then the younger man led
on, showing the older one how to reach the cave mouth. After a tense,
excited interval of waiting Colonel Colvin issued out of the medicine
lodge and ran toward Sid. Hano stood by the lodge, the girl Nahla
already passionately clinging to him. Honanta stalked toward his son as
all the tribe stood by and watched.
“Gad!--Sid, my boy, we’ve had _some_ ride!” burst out Colonel Colvin
bluffly, as Sid went to his arms and Scotty gripped at his extended
hand. “This Apache boy, Hano, found me at the ranch and told me you-all
were in trouble. Seems that he escaped from some Mexicans out of the
desert and reached the railroad at Tacna. There he sold all he had and
bought a ticket to our station, Colvin’s, on the main line. ‘Knew my
name, long time’ is all I could get out of him. But it was plain enough
that you were in trouble down here and he wanted me to come quickly, so
we took the train to the Ajo Mines, bought horses and rode here.--Hey!
What the nation’s the matter with our John?” he broke off suddenly as
his eyes fell on the occupant of the cot.
“Oh, I jest nat’rally stopped a leetle lead in a fight we had with
the greasers hyarabouts, Colonel,” grinned Big John. “Jest hed to,
sir!--Them durned boys won’t be satisfied till they kills this ole
puncher, nohow, I’m thinkin’!” he grimaced whimsically. “Lots doin’
’round hyar, Colonel! Let them boys tell you all about it.”
He sank back happily while Sid told him the whole story of the Red
Mesa plaque, of the trip to Pinacate and then of Vasquez’s diabolical
attempt and the consequent loss of all their water.
Colonel Colvin listened sympathetically. Before Sid had finished he
felt a touch on his elbow and turned to find Honanta facing him.
“Does my white father remember the massacre of Apache Cave--and this?”
the chief asked, his voice vibrating with emotion as his hand touched
the gold double eagle dangling on his chest.
“Yes--a bitter memory, chief!” replied Colonel Colvin. “The Army does
not talk of it much. Curious!” he exclaimed, looking at the coin and
evidently searching back in his memory. “Why, I was in that fight
myself!--I remember that coin--or a piece just like it--I gave one to a
poor squaw whom we found badly wounded with a baby in her arms. She was
the only one left alive in all those heaps of slain Apaches. Gad, but
that massacre was a devilish piece of business for the Army to have to
do!”
“I _am_ that baby, my white father!” said Honanta, drawing himself
up dramatically. “The sole living survivor of Apache Cave--and
unconquered! My heart told me that this young man, whose name was also
Colvin”--indicating Sid--“was your son. Therefore I spared him, when
my old men advised that he be slain, since he had discovered this our
refuge.”
He waved a fringed arm around at the mighty walls of Red Mesa. “This
was our home!” he declaimed. “No more! The white man came, and he took
our water. All of it! Our home is dead. We must go!”
“Where _will_ you go, chief?” asked the Colonel, eying Honanta keenly.
“I know not,” said Honanta, wearily. “Somewhere out into the desert,
where my people can find peace again.”
“Listen, chief!” said Colonel Colvin earnestly. “Where I live is called
the Grand Cañon of the Gila. Your people knew it well, once. High above
us towers a mighty peak, all orange in the glow of the sun, and across
it a great band of pure white. That peak you have heard of, I know,
chief!” declared Colonel Colvin, and Honanta nodded in confirmation.
“In the valley of our river are timbered ranges, where deer and bear
and turkey run wild and trout fill the streams. Across from us are
steep precipices along which leads the old Apache Trail--the home of
your fathers, chief. I own much land there, plenty for all of us. This
mine the boys tell me of in your Red Mesa will buy more. If that golden
double eagle means any obligation to you, chief, will you come to my
place with your whole band--there to live as did your fathers?”
Honanta hesitated. His eyes beamed with pleasure, yet a troubled,
doubtful expression in them told Sid that he was wondering how long our
government would let them stay there. Better than the reservation the
freedom of the desert!
“That orange mountain was once a sign of the Great Mystery to your
people, chief,” went on the Colonel, his voice still more persuasive
and compelling. “It stands there yet, a sign that His ways are
unchanging, His mercy everlasting. Come! There is room there for all
of us!--and I will see to it myself that our government grants you
freedom--as it has already done for the Mohave Apaches.”
Honanta’s eyes widened at that last! It was news to him that the policy
of our government had in any way liberalized! Then he stretched out his
hand, his eyes glowing.
“My white father is kind! He is noble-hearted and just!” he exclaimed.
“Would that he and my own father, Chief Chuntz, had known each other
otherwise than over a rifle barrel! I owe you my life, Colonel Colvin;
you have brought me back my son. I thank the Great Mystery that He
whispered in my heart to spare yours! In the name of my people, I
accept your offer, Colonel, gratefully!”
“Good!” exclaimed the bluff old colonel, heartily, as their hands
clasped.
One by one, family by family, the Apaches bade farewell to their homes
and then descended the cave tunnel. A procession followed made up of
Sid and Scotty, Colonel Colvin and Niltci, carrying Big John on an
improvised stretcher. Two horses with the Colonel and Sid riding them,
bore a pole litter for Big John thereafter; the rest were laden with
every jar of water the Apaches possessed. And so the cavalcade set
forth north into the desert.
Sid turned to look back for the last time at Red Mesa. High and lifted
up, its walls rose in huge flanks out of the mountain side, glaring
in the burning sun. Soon there would be no life there, no luxuriant
roothold for green living plants, no happy home for a simple people.
When Scotty got his company organized--and he _did_, in due time, but
that is beyond the province of this story--there would be a scene of
sweating activity there, ore cars coming and going, men and burros
toiling, the great tank repaired and giving water to them all.
But Sid did not want to think of that. Rather he would like always
to remember it as the one place he knew where once Indians had
lived as their forefathers had, long before the white man came--in
simple, reverent faith in the Great Mystery, in the simple needs
of a free people, in the simple, sure, old foundations of Indian
morality--Courage, Honor, Truth, Chastity.
Three days later they reached Ajo Mines. The company lent the Colonel
a train of empty ore cars and the railroad took them to the main line.
Thence the Colonel led Honanta and his people to a land of mighty
mountain ranges, of green alfalfa fields strung along a rushing river
dominated by beetling crags, of herds of fat cattle grazing in a land
of plenty. And here, under the protection of the name Colvin, in the
timbered hills of their forefathers, Honanta and the Yellow Bear clan
of the Apache at last found peace.
THE END
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Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.