BLASTING THE ACEQUIA
A little crowd of these peaceful and industrious red men, in character
so unlike their wild cousins of the prairie and the sierra, were grouped
around the point of rocks. As Stephens approached them he heard the
click, click, of steel on stone; and as he came near the crowd made way
for him, and the cacique saluted him: "Good morning, Sooshiuamo; you
have come at the right time. See how well the young men have worked at
making the holes in the rock as you showed them yesterday. They have
made them quite deep now. Come and tell us if they are right."
Stephens looked into the ditch, where a powerfully built Indian was
laboriously jumping a heavy bar of steel up and down in a hole bored in
the hard, solid rock, giving it a half-turn with his wrists at each
jump. The Colorado miner got down into the ditch and took the drill he
had lent them out of the hands of the Indian, and tried the hole with
it. His deft and easy way of handling the heavy jumping-bar showed
practised skill as well as strength. "That'll do right enough," he said,
looking up at the cacique who stood on the bank above him. "You have got
your chaps to do the business well. Are the other two holes as deep as
this?"
"Yes, deeper," answered the Indian. "See, here they are; try them; the
young men have been at them since noon yesterday."
Stephens moved along to the points indicated and examined in a critical
manner the work that had been effected. "Yes, that looks as if it would
do all right," he said in approving tones. "Now then, you fellows, give
me room, and keep still a few minutes, and I'll show you some
fireworks."
He produced from his pockets the powder and fuse, and proceeded to make
his, to them, mysterious preparations, the eager and inquisitive circle
of red men pressing as near as possible, and almost climbing over each
other's shoulders in order to get a good view. Their excited comments
amused Stephens greatly, and in return he kept up a running fire of
jests upon them.
But it is not always easy to jest appropriately with men who stand on a
different step of the intellectual ladder from yourself; and without his
dreaming of such a thing, one of his laughing repartees suggested to his
Indian auditors a train of thought that their minds took very seriously.
Stephens's action in ramming down a charge of powder, and then tamping
it, had not unnaturally reminded them of an operation which was the only
one connected with gunpowder that they had experience of. "Why, he's
loading it just like a gun," cried a voice from the crowd; "but what's
he going to shoot?"
"Shoot?" retorted Stephens, without looking up, as he adjusted the fuse
with his fingers; "why, I'm going to shoot the sky, of course. Don't you
see how this hole points right straight up to heaven? You sit on the
mouth of it when I touch her off, and it'll boost you aloft away up
over the old sun there"; and raising his face he pointed to the brightly
glowing orb which was already high overhead.
At his words a sort of shiver ran around the ring of red men. Religion
is the strongest and the deepest sentiment of the Indian mind, and the
rash phrase sounded as if some violation of the sanctity of what they
worshipped was intended. What! Shoot against the sacred sky! Shoot with
sacrilegious gunpowder against the home of The Shiuana, of "Those
Above"? The deed might be taken as a defiance of those Dread Powers, and
bring down their wrath upon them all.
Then came a crisis.
"Bad medicine! witchcraft!" exclaimed a voice with the unmistakable ring
of angry terror in it. To the Indian, witchcraft is the one unpardonable
sin, only to be atoned for by a death of lingering torture.
A murmur of swift-rising wrath followed the accusing voice. The American
was warned in a moment that he had made a dangerous slip, and he at once
tried to get out of it with as little fuss as might be.
"You dry up!" he retorted indignantly. "Witchcraft be blowed! You ought
to know better than to talk like that, you folks. I'm telling you truth
now. That was only a little joke of mine, about shooting the sky.
There's no bad medicine in that. We Americans don't know anything about
such fool tricks as witchcraft. Here's all there is to it. I'm simply
going to blast this rock for you. It's just an ordinary thing that's
done thousands of times every day in the mines all over the United
States."
"Ah, but there are great wizards among the Americans, and their medicine
is very bad," cried the same voice of angry terror that had spoken
before. "Are you working their works? are you one of them?"
Stephens glanced quickly round the ring of dark eyes now fixed on him
with alien looks. He saw there a universal scowl that sent a chill
through him.
"There's a lot of explosive stuff round here besides my
blasting-powder," he said to himself, "and it looks as if I'd come
mighty nigh touching it off, without meaning it, with that feeble little
joke. What a flare-up about nothing!"
There flashed across his mind on the instant a story of three stranger
Indians, who by some unlucky chance had violated the mysteries of the
Santiago folk and had never been heard of more.
For himself he had every reason, so far, to be satisfied with his
treatment, but now, at last, he had happened to touch on a sensitive
spot with the Indians, and behold, this was the result. He saw that he
must take a firm stand, and take it at once. He straightened himself up
from his stooping position, dusting off the earth that adhered to his
hands.
"Now, look here, you chaps," he said peremptorily, as he stood erect in
the middle of the ditch, "you want to quit that rot about witches right
here and now. There's only one question I'm going to ask you, and that's
this--do you want your ditch fixed up, or don't you? You say it has been
a trouble to you for hundreds of years, and here I stand ready to fix it
for you right now in just one minute. There's only one more thing to be
done, and that's to strike the match. Come, Cacique, you're the boss
around here. Say which it is to be. Is it 'yes' or 'no'?"
Salvador, the cacique of Santiago, was no fool. Personally he was as
firm a believer in witchcraft as any of his people, nor would he have
hesitated for a moment to utilise such a charge as had just been made to
rid himself of an enemy. But he was also well aware that there were
times when it was far more expedient to suppress it, and that this was
one of them.
"Nonsense, Miguel!" he exclaimed, turning abruptly on the Indian who had
first raised the dreaded cry; "this Americano is a good man, and no
wizard, and your business is to hold your tongue till you are asked to
speak. It is the proper office of your betters to see to these matters,
and you have no right nor call to interfere."
The lonely American heard him speak thus with an intense sense of
relief. The power of the chief was great, and his words were strong to
exorcise the malignant spirit of fanaticism.
"Good for you, Salvador!" he exclaimed, as the cacique's reproof ceased,
and left a visible effect on the attitude of the crowd, "that's the
talk! I'm glad to see you've got some sense. Your answer is 'yes,' I
take it."
"Assuredly I mean 'yes,' Sooshiuamo," answered the cacique; "we want you
to go on and finish your work. I say so, and what I say I mean. But if
all is ready, as you declare, before you strike the match we will offer
a prayer to Those Above that all may be well."
"Why certainly, Cacique," assented Stephens, "I've got no sort of
objection to make. You fire ahead." He breathed more freely now, but he
was conscious of a vastly quickened interest in the religious methods of
the Indians as he watched the cacique withdraw a little space from the
edge of the ditch and turn, facing the east, the other Indians following
his example, and standing in irregular open formation behind him, all
facing towards the east likewise.
"Didn't reckon I was going to drop in for a prayer-meeting," said the
American, with a humour which he kept to himself, "or I might have
brought my Sunday-go-to-meeting togs if I'd only known. But, by George!
when I was mining over on the Pacific slope, the days when things was
booming over there, if we'd had to stop and have prayers on the Comstock
lode every time we were going to let off a blast, I should rather say
that the output of bullion in Nevada would have fallen off some."
He listened intently to the flow of words that the cacique, acting as
the spokesman of his people, was pouring forth, but they were utterly
unintelligible to him, for the prayer was couched in the language of the
tribe, and not in civilised Spanish. All he could distinguish were the
"Ho-a's" that came in at intervals from the crowd like responses.
"I wonder what he's saying, and who or what he's saying it to?" he
meditated questioningly. "What was it that Nepomuceno Sanchez was
telling me only last week,--that they didn't have service in that old
Roman Catholic church of theirs more than once in a blue moon, and all
the rest of the time they go in for some heathen games of their own in
their secret estufas in the pueblo; he swore that one time he dropped on
to a party of them at some very queer games indeed, on the site of an
old ruined pueblo of theirs 'way off up on the Potrero de las
Vacas--swore they had a pair of big stone panthers up there, carved out
of the living rock, that they go and offer sacrifices to. I didn't more
than half believe him then, but this makes me think there's something in
it. What the blazes are they at now?" A chorus of "Ho-a's," uttered
with a deep, heartfelt intonation, like the long a-a-mens at a revival
meeting, rose from the crowd. There rose also from them little tufts of
feather-down that floated upwards to the sky, soaring as it were on the
breath of the worshippers, outward and visible symbols of the petitions
that ascended from the congregation. The cacique took a step in advance,
holding in his hands two long feathers crossed; he stooped down and
began to bury them in the loose, light soil. Stephens, his curiosity now
intensely aroused, was moving forward a little in order to see more
closely what was taking place, but an Indian instantly motioned him back
in silence, finger on lip, with a countenance of shocked gravity, making
the irreverent inquirer feel like an impudent small boy caught in the
act of disturbing a church service.
"Perhaps at this stage of the performances they'd like to have me take
off my hat," he soliloquised. "Well, mebbe I will." He looked round at
the motionless figures reverently standing with bowed heads. "Do at Rome
as Rome does, so some folks say. These Indians themselves don't have any
hats to take off, but they look so blamed serious over it that I'm dead
sure they would if they wore 'em. Dashed if I don't do it; here goes!"
and he swept his broad sombrero from his head, subduing his face to a
decorously grave expression.
But the repressed humour of the American reasserted itself beneath this
enforced solemnity of his exterior. "Makes me think of the story of the
man the Indians in California once took prisoner, only instead of
putting him to the torture they painted him pea-green and worshipped him
as a deity. It's not so bad as that yet," he went on to himself, "but I
don't much like taking any sort of part in this show, nohow." He looked
at the hat which he was devoutly holding in his hand as he stood amongst
the congregation, and his face assumed a quizzical expression. "I wonder
now if by doing this I aint, by chance, worshipping some blamed idol or
other. I used to be a joined member oncet, back there in Ohio, of the
United Presbyterian Church. I wonder what poor old Elder Edkins would
say now if he caught sight of me in this shivaree. However, I guess I
can stand it, if it don't go too far. So long as they stick to this
tomfoolery and only worship those turkey feathers, or whatever they are,
that the cacique's been burying, I'll lay low. But if they want to play
me for an idol, and start in to painting me pea-green, there'll be a
rumpus. What a time their prayer-meeting does take, anyhow! Ah, thank
goodness, here's the doxology."
The cacique had finished his incantation over the crossed feathers, and
interred them properly. He now rose and dismissed the assembly, which
instantly broke up, the serious expression rapidly dissolving from all
faces, as it does from those of a congregation pouring out of church.
It was on the tip of Stephens's tongue to begin, "Why, Cacique, you've
forgot to take up the collection. Where's your plate?" as he saw
Salvador approaching him, but a sobering recollection of the awkward way
in which his last joke had missed fire checked the temptation to be
flippant as too dangerous.
"My game," thought he, "is to cut the gab and come to the 'osses, as the
English circus-manager said; or else they might call on Brother Miguel
to give an exhortation, and who knows which end of the horn I should be
liable to come out at then?"
"Well, Cacique," he said aloud, "through? so soon? You don't say! Are
you really ready now?"
"Yes," answered the Indian, "now you begin. Do your work."
"All right then," rejoined the American; "if that's so, by the
permission of the chairman I'll take the floor." He sprang down into the
ditch, drew out a match, and turned round to the cacique. "Now,
Salvador," he called out, "make your people stand clear. Let them go
right away."
They did not need telling twice, and there was a general stampede, the
bolder hiding close by, the most part running off to the distance of a
rifle-shot. The cacique gathered up the buckskin riata of his plump
mustang, which stood there champing the Spanish ring-bit till his jaws
dropped flakes of foam, and retired to a safe distance. Stephens stood
alone in the ditch and struck the match. It went out; he took off his
broad felt hat, struck another match, and held it inside. This time the
flame caught, and he applied it to the ends of the fuses, and retreated
in a leisurely manner round the back of a big rock near by. He found two
or three of the boldest Indians behind it, and pushing them back stood
leaning against the rock. They squeezed up against him, their bright
black eyes gleaming and their red fingers trembling with excitement.
They had never seen a blast let off before.
Boom! boom! went the first two charges, and the echoes of the reports
resounded through the foothills that bordered the valley. Several
Indians started forward from their hiding-places.
"Keep back there, will you!" shouted Stephens. "Keep 'em back,
Salvador. Tito," he said familiarly to the Indian who was next him
beside the rock, "if you go squeezing me like that I'll pull your
pigtail." Tito's long black hair was done up and rolled with yellow
braid into a neat pigtail at the nape of his neck. The Pueblo Indian men
all wear their hair this way, and are as proud of their queues as so
many Chinamen.
Tito laughed and showed his gleaming teeth, as he nudged the boy next to
him at the American's joke. Boom! went the third charge. The practical
miner looked up warily to see that no fragments were flying overhead,
and then stepping from under cover waved his arm. At the signal the
Indians poured from their hiding-places and rushed eagerly down to the
scene of action.
The blast was a great success. Some tons of stone had been shattered and
dislodged just where it was necessary, and it was plain to see that the
ditch might now be made twice as big as before. Without any delay the
Indians swarmed in like ants, and began picking up the broken stone with
their hands, and carrying it out to build up and strengthen the lower
side of the embankment.
While the workers were thus busily engaged, the cacique came forward,
holding his horse by the riata of plaited buckskin. He made a deep,
formal reverence before the man who had wrought what for them was
nothing less than a miracle,--the man by whose superior art the solid
rock had been dissipated into a shower of fragments, and who now stood
quietly looking on at the scene of his triumph.
"It is truly most wonderful, this thing that you have done," began the
chief, "and we will be your devoted servants for ever after this"; and
he bowed himself again more deeply than before, as deeply as when he
had buried the sacred feathers a few minutes earlier.
The native humour of the American asserted itself at once. "Here's the
pea-green deity business on," he murmured to himself. "So far, so good;
I don't mind the deity part, but I draw the line if he trots out his
paint-pot; then I'll begin to kick."
"Since the days of Montezuma," continued the cacique, with an eloquent
wave of his hand, "no benefactor like you has ever come to the red men;
no blessing has been wrought for them such as you have done. Would that
our departed ancestors had been allowed to see with their own eyes the
great, the glorious manifestation of power that has been shown to us,
their children--" and his mellifluous oratory rolled on in an unceasing
stream of praise.
"By George!" said Stephens to himself, "I wonder if right now isn't my
best time to bounce him about the silver mine. I did calculate to bring
it up before the council of chiefs when I saw a favourable opportunity,
but though the rest of 'em aren't here at this moment the cacique's
talking so almighty grateful that perhaps I'd better strike while the
iron's hot." He listened a moment to the profuse expressions of
gratitude that poured from the red man's lips. "If he only means a
quarter of what he's saying, I ought to have no difficulty in getting
him to back me up. But perhaps I'd best tackle him alone first, and make
sure of his support." He waited until the cacique had finished his
peroration.
"Glad you're pleased, I'm sure," said Stephens in reply, "and here's my
hand on it," and he shook the cacique's hand warmly in his. "Just let's
step this way a little," he went on quietly. "I've got a word or two to
say to you between ourselves," and the pair moved away side by side to a
distance of a few yards from the site of the blasted rock.
"You see, working together like this, how easily we've been able to
manage it," began the American diplomatically. "I'm an expert at mining,
and your young men have carried out the execution of this job admirably.
Now, look at here, Cacique; what I wanted to say to you was this. Why
shouldn't we go in together, sort of partners like, and work your silver
mine together in the same sort of way? I could make big money for both
of us; there'd be plenty for me and plenty for you and for all your
people, if it's only half as good as I've heard tell"; he paused,
looking sideways at the Indian as he spoke to note what effect his
suggestion produced on him. At the words "silver mine" the chief's face,
which had been smiling and gracious in sympathy with the feelings he had
been expressing in his speech, suddenly clouded over and hardened into a
rigid impassibility.
"I don't know what you mean by our silver mine, Don Estevan," he
answered frigidly. "There is no such thing in existence."
"Tut, tut," said Stephens, good-humouredly, "don't you go to make any
mystery of the thing with me, Cacique. I'm your good friend, as you
acknowledged yourself only a minute ago. I mean that old silver mine
you've got up there on Rattlesnake Mountain, Cerro de las Viboras as you
call it. You keep it carefully covered up, with logs and earth piled up
over the mouth of it. Quite right of you, too. No use to go and let
everybody see what you've got. I quite agree to that. But you needn't
make any bones about it with me who am your friend, and well posted
about the whole thing to boot."
In reality Stephens was retailing to the Indian the story of the mine as
far as he had been able to trace it among the Mexicans. This was the
first time that he had even hinted to any of the Santiago people that he
knew anything at all about it, or had any curiosity on the subject.
Salvador maintained his attitude of impassibility.
"I don't know who has told you all this," he answered, "but it is all
nonsense. Put it out of your mind; there's nothing in it."
But in spite of these denials Stephens believed his shot about the mine
had gone home, and he knew also that the cacique was reputed to be fond
of gain.
"Oh, I understand you well enough, Salvador," he rejoined with easy
familiarity. "Of course you're bound to deny it. It's the old policy of
your tribe. That's all right. But now, as between you and me, it's time
there was a new departure, and you and I are the men to make it. I tell
you I know just what I'm talking about, and there's money in it for both
of us." He thought he saw the dark eyes of the Indian glisten, but his
lips showed small sign of yielding.
"It's no use, Don Estevan," the latter said firmly. "I cannot tell you a
word now, and I don't suppose I ever shall be able to. Keep silence. Let
no one know you have spoken to me about such things."
At this moment loud cries broke out from where the workers were busy,
and Stephens, wondering what was up, listened intently to the sounds. He
thought he could distinguish one word, "Kaeahvala," repeated again and
again. The cacique turned round abruptly. A huge rattlesnake, which had
been disturbed by the shock of the blast, had emerged from a crevice in
the rocks, and showed itself plainly to view wriggling away over the
open ground.
"After him, after him, Snakes!" called out the cacique in a loud voice.
"He is angry because his house has been shaken. To the estufa without
delay! You must pacify him."
On the instant there darted forth in pursuit half a dozen young men of
the Snake family, and at the same moment Faro, with an eager yelp,
announced his ardent intention of pacifying the snake in his own
fashion, and away went the dog, who had been compelled to endure, much
against his will, the tedium of the Indian prayer-meeting and the
oratory of the cacique, and now proceeded to grow frantic with
excitement at the chance of joining independently in the chase.
"Come back there, Faro," cried Stephens, in an agony of alarm for his
favourite; "come back there, will you!" But Faro was headstrong and
pretended not to hear.
The cacique too was filled with alarm, but the object of his solicitude
was not the dog but the reptile. "Quick, quick!" he cried to the young
men; "be quick and save him from that hound."
And then Stephens saw a sight that astonished him out of measure. The
Indian youths had the advantage of Faro in starting nearer the snake;
they ran like the wind, and the foremost of them, overtaking the reptile
before Faro could get up, pounced upon him and swung him aloft in the
air, grasping him firmly just behind the head and allowing the writhing
coils to twine around his muscular arm. One of his companions produced a
bunch of feathers and stroked the venomous head from which the forked
tongue was darting, while the baffled Faro danced around, leaping high
in his efforts to get at his prey. Stephens ran up and secured his dog,
and looked on at this extraordinary piece of snake-charming with an
amazement that increased every moment.
"But why don't you kill the brute?" he cried. "Don't play with him like
that; kill him quick. Tell 'em to kill him, Cacique. I never passed a
rattler in my life without killing it if I could; it's a point of
conscience with me."
The Indian looked at him with grave disapproval, as a parent might look
at a child who had in its ignorance been guilty of a serious fault.
"You do not understand, Sooshiuamo," he said in a tone in which reproof
was mingled with pity; "the snake is their grandfather, and they have to
show their piety towards him." Then turning from the scoffer, "Hasten,"
he called to the young men; "run with him to the proper place"; and away
they sped across the plain towards the pueblo, the writhing reptile
still borne high in the air, and the bunch of feathers still playing
around its angry jaws.
"Well, I'm jiggered!" said Stephens. "I never saw such a thing as that
in my life. I say, Cacique, what is it that you want to do with the
brute, anyhow? Do you mean to tell me that you make a deity of him?"
The cacique's face assumed the same rapt and solemn expression it had
worn during what Stephens had irreverently called the prayer-meeting.
"These are our mysteries, Sooshiuamo," he said with a voice of awe; "it
is not for you to inquire into them. Be warned, for it is dangerous."
"Oh, blow your mysteries!" said Stephens in English, under his breath.
"Very well, Salvador," he went on aloud. "I'm sure I don't want to go
poking my nose into other people's business. I think I'll just say
good-morning. I've blasted that rock for you all right. Now you see if
you can make that ditch work; if you can't, you come and tell me, and
I'll see what more I can do to fix it for you. So long"; and without
more ado he turned on his heel and walked off down to the river.