CHILDREN OF THE SUN
They looked at the seed corn, and the American complimented Don
Nepomuceno on his enterprise as an improving farmer.
"Why don't you take to the business yourself?" said the Mexican, as he
relocked the door behind them. "You have money and you have a pair of
good mules. You could buy land and work-oxen and hire peons. You would
make your living at it easier than at the mining. How long have you been
a miner?"
"Ten years, on and off," answered the other. "It is a good slice out of
one's life, I admit"; there was a certain wistfulness in his tone. He
was beginning to think that perhaps he had missed a good deal of
happiness in his time.
"Ten years of wandering!" exclaimed the Mexican. "_Ay de mi_, but you
must be tired. Why should you want to go back to Colorado and begin it
all over again?"
"Well, for one thing," answered the other, "I've just heard from an old
pard of mine up there, and I think from the way he talks he's got hold
of a good thing. I'm going to see."
"And you'll go all that journey just to see!" said the other. "You trust
him? You think he's a good man?"
"Well, I don't know so much about that," admitted Stephens. "Truth to
tell, the last time I saw him we had considerable of a difference of
opinion; in fact we split, and we reckoned to stay split. You see, he
busted me up as we call it, ruined me, that is; only I had the luck to
sort of pull myself round. But that happened two years ago; all the same
I don't say that I want him for a pard again, though he must have pretty
well straightened himself out, the way he talks; but still, you bet, I'd
like mighty well to shake hands with him, right now."
"And he ruined you?" exclaimed the Mexican.
"Busted me wide open. Left me flat broke," said the American.
"How did it all happen?" asked the other. "Tell us all about it; we have
heard some of your adventures, but not this. Come into the sitting-room
here and let us have it."
"Well, if it won't bore you, you're welcome," said Stephens, following
his host and preparing to refill his pipe.
"Ah, you must smoke when you talk, I know," said Sanchez, "and you wish
to smoke your own American tobacco, for you do not like the flavour of
our New Mexican _punche_ in your pipe. Ho, a light here, Pedrito! quick,
bring a live coal for the señor."
Pedrito, a small son of the peon, came running from the kitchen with a
live coal in a piece of hoop iron, which he offered to Stephens, pulling
off his cap and standing bareheaded before the honoured guest, with
old-world courtesy. Manuelita knew very well what was up, and fixed
herself down to listen just by the door, where she could hear every
word. Stephens settled himself down comfortably on the divan, and began.
"I picked up with this partner, who has just written me this letter,
Rockyfeller his name is, when I was up in Idaho. We took to each other
kind of natural-like, and he and I pulled together as amiably as a span
of old wheel-horses for a goodish bit. We were quite different sort of
men, too, in ourselves; but somehow that seemed to make it all the
easier for us to get along. We worked in the mines all that winter, and
when spring came we had enough saved to rig out a real A1 prospecting
outfit. Rocky--that's what I called him--used to spree a bit every once
in a while, but nothing really to hurt, you know. He could pull up
short, which is more than most men who go on the spree have sense to do.
His sprees didn't prevent our saving over four hundred dollars. Then we
bought two cayuses to ride--cayuses is the name they give to those
broncho horses up that way,--and a good pack-mule and plenty of grub and
blankets. We put in the whole of that summer prospecting off in the
Coeur d'Alène country, and we staked out a lot of claims on different
lodes, and we put in a good bit of work on some of 'em so as to hold 'em
for the year. Well, come fall, we hadn't been able to sell any one of
our claims, and we hadn't taken out any high-grade ore that would pay
for packing over the mountains to any reduction works, and there we
were, short of cash. So we cleared from that Coeur d'Alène country at
last. It was too far from a railroad. We sold our claims for what we
could get, and that wasn't much, and we lit out for Montana, and there
that next summer we just did everlastingly prospect over some of the
roughest country I ever ran across. The Indians were powerful bad too,
to say nothing of the road-agents. But we struck it at last pretty rich
on a lode that we called 'The Last Lap'--that's the last round, you
know, that the horses make on a race-track. I'd spent eight mortal years
chasing my tail all round the Pacific slope looking for a good lode, and
here it was, after all, across on the head-waters of the Missouri in
Montana. We knew we'd got a good thing. The ledge was three to five feet
thick, with a nice, uniform lot of high-grade ore, and a special streak
that would assay up to five hundred dollars a ton. I never saw a nicer
lode. The only thing was, it was a plaguy long way from any quartz mill
for the free ore, and it was a plaguy sight farther to the only
reduction works that could handle the richest portions of it. Of course
what the mine wanted was a smelter of its own, right on the spot, but
that's what got us. We hadn't the capital to start it. It wanted at
least fifty or a hundred thousand dollars laid out before we could hope
to get back a cent. That mine was worth a million, if we'd had it in
California, but off there, five or six hundred miles from a railroad,
owned by us two prospectors who'd just about got to the end of our
tether, it was too big a thing for us to handle. Well, we did what work
we could on it. We sunk a shaft and ran a bit of a drift, and we went
into Helena and we offered a share in it to a few capitalists we thought
we could trust. None of 'em would even look at it. At last we ran on to
Colonel Starr,--old Beebee Starr; likely you never heard of him, but
they knew him well enough up there,--and he rode out with us to see it;
and he tumbled to it, too, as soon as ever he'd grubbed out a few
specimens with his own pick and had 'em assayed. Well, he wouldn't take
a half-interest and find the money to develop the mine, which was what
we wanted him to do, and we were stony-broke by that time except for our
cayuses and our camp outfit, and winter a-coming on; and the long and
short of it was that we gave Colonel Starr a quitclaim deed to our whole
interest in the Last Lap Lode for twelve thousand five hundred dollars
in greenbacks, paid down on the nail. The Last Lap has paid more than
that much in a month in dividends since then, but that's common enough;
that's how things do pan out; but I don't believe in whining over my
luck, never did. And I'd been waiting eight years for a look in, and I
didn't despise getting my half of the twelve thousand five hundred
dollars, if the Last Lap was worth a million.
"So we sold the best quartz mine in Montana, and that's where Rocky and
I split. We got the money from Colonel Starr in greenbacks, and it was a
roll as thick as my arm. And Rocky pouched it all, for I had to go out
to a cabin three miles out of town to see another old pard of mine who
had been crushed by a fall of rock and was dying. I know I ought never
to have left Rocky with that money on him; but what was I to do? It was
late in the day; I had to go; I couldn't take it along with me, for a
man was liable in those days to be held up anywhere round the outskirts
of town by those cursed road-agents. Rocky had kept plumb straight for
over a year. I trusted him, and I went. I got back to our hotel that
night about ten o'clock, and a man says to me, 'D'you know where your
pard Rocky's gone?'
"'No,' says I, 'aint he here?'
"'Not much,' says he; 'he's at Frenchy's, bucking agi'n' the tiger.'
"My heart felt like a lump of ice. I just turned right around and walked
across the road to where this Frenchy kept a faro bank, and went in.
There was Rocky, about half drunk, sitting at the table, with about
three little chips on the cloth before him. I went up and put my hand on
Rocky's shoulder and looked on. The dealer turned up the jack, I think
it was, and raked in Rocky's stake. Rocky turns his head and looks up at
me with a ghastly grin. 'Is that you?' says he; 'Jack, you'd orter hev
come before. I've had a devil of a run of bad luck; I'm cleaned out.'
"'In God's name,' says I, 'is that so?'
"'You bet,' says he.
"I felt as if my eyes were two big burning holes in my head. 'God
forgive you, Rocky,' says I, 'for playing the giddy goat, and me for
leaving you alone for one night in Helena, Montana. Come on out of this
now, Rocky, and I'll divide my share with you. I never went back on a
pard.'
"Then the big blow came. 'Your share?' says he; 'why it's all gone. It's
all gone, every dollar of it, and them chips you saw me lose was the end
of the Last Lap Lode.' I heard some bummer behind me give a laugh, one
of those whiskey-soaking galoots that think it funny to see the next man
cleaned out.
"I felt a queer lump in my throat, and I says to the banker, very
solemn, 'Mr. Frenchy, this gentleman here,' I was holding my hand on
Rocky, 'he's my pardner, and I must beg you to take notice that half
what you've won off him is my property that he had charge of.'
"'That's no use, young man,' says the banker to me. 'We play for keeps
in this house, and so you'll find it.'
"'We'll see about that,' says I. 'Now, Rocky, tell me, is the whole of
the Last Lap gone, the whole of the twelve thousand five hundred
dollars?'
"'Every last cent,' says Rocky. I could see by his looks that he felt
powerful mean.
"'Then, mister,' says I to the banker--I was determined to be deadly
civil--'six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars of what you've took
from this gentleman belongs to me.'
"'You're interfering with the progress of the game,' says he; 'and say,
look here, you don't need to make that remark of yours here again.
That's entirely a matter between you and your pard; it's none of my
business, but if you want any advice of me, it is that you take him
outside and settle it with him.'
"He had his gang around him, and I saw that they had the deadwood on me,
and the other players wanted to go ahead with their game. I was a
stranger from the mountains, dead-broke, with no backing, and I felt
there was no show for me in that shebang. I didn't open my mouth, but I
set myself to get Rocky home, first thing. I had pretty near to drag him
there. When I got him on the street the whiskey he'd drunk went into his
head, and he was like a madman. He wanted to fight me, actually he did,
till I got his gun away from him. He hit me, yes, he struck me with his
fist, till I had to pinion him; luckily I was the stronger man of the
two. I got him back to our room at last, and got him to bed. He just
laid there on his bed like a log and snored. And I laid over there on
mine and cursed. I lay awake all that night thinking. I'd been a brother
to Rocky; I'd saved him time and again before that night; and now he'd
been and given me clean away,--lost me the only good stake I'd ever had
in eight years.
"I was sick. I didn't know what to do. We hadn't even money to pay our
livery-stable and hotel bill. We'd put up at a first-class hotel when
we made our bargain with Colonel Starr, reckoning to pay our account out
of the proceeds of the Last Lap. Now, by selling our cayuses we'd hardly
cover it; so that here we were, fairly busted, afoot, stony-broke, and
winter coming on. Sick was no name for what I felt. It was all to begin
over again, and I was eight years older than when I started out at
prospecting. You bet I felt old that night. Morning came, and I couldn't
eat any breakfast. Rocky was snoring still. I belted on my six-shooter,
stepped over to Frenchy's, and asked for the proprietor. They told me he
wasn't up. It was a tony gambling-house, you know, quite a 'way-up' sort
of place. I sat down and said I could wait. At last they told me he'd
see me. I was shown up into a room. He was there, spick and span, in a
biled shirt and diamond pin, and all that.
"'Sit down,' says he.
"'Thank you,' said I, 'I can stand. I prefer it.' There was a table
between us.
"'Let me warn you,' says he, 'at once, that this room is loopholed, and
that you are now covered with a double-barrelled shot-gun, loaded with
sixteen buckshot in both barrels, at about ten feet off. If you make a
move towards that six-shooter you've brought you'll be filled so full of
lead that your hide wouldn't hold shucks.'
"'All right,' said I, 'I expected as much. I didn't bring this
six-shooter to argue with you.'
"He kind of laughed at that. 'Then what the h----l did you bring it
here for?' says he.
"'To protect myself on the street,' says I; 'to protect myself from
footpads as I go back to my hotel with my money.'
"'What money's that you're talking about?' says he.
"'My money,' says I, 'that you've won off my pardner last night, six
thousand two hundred and fifty dollars in greenbacks. That'll need
protecting.'
"He gave a kind of a grin. 'It's protected by them thirty-two buckshot
at the present moment,' he says, 'and I guess they're good enough to
guarantee it.'
"'I'm not denying it,' says I. 'I've come here, as a gentleman, to
appeal to you as a gentleman, to restore me my money that my pardner's
wrongly handed over to you.'
"He looked amused. 'I notice you don't speak as if you upheld the game
wasn't square,--as if he'd been robbed of it here,' says he.
"'I don't know nothing at all about that,' says I. 'I don't gamble
myself, but I don't doubt your game's a square game enough, as things
go. People say it is. I don't complain of the game; that's Rocky's
business, if it's anybody's. It's my money that I'm talking about,
whether it was a skin game that he lost it over or not. It's those
greenbacks that Colonel Starr paid me that I'm here for.'
"Then he fairly laughed out. 'Why, you galoot,' says he, 'you talk like
a tenderfoot, yet you've been around this Western country long enough to
cut your eye-teeth. When did you ever hear of a professional gambler
giving up the stakes after he'd won 'em?'
"'I don't know as I ever did,' says I; 'but if not, here's the place for
it to begin to happen, right here and now. I tell you I've got to have
that money. I tell you I'm tired. I've prospected in every range of
mountains there is in three Territories to find that Last Lap Lode.
I've been eight years sweating and starving and freezing and wrastling
round. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I got my stake, and
I've got to have it. I tell you again I'm tired. I won't go through it
all again for nothing. I'm either going out of this room with my money
in my pocket, or I'm going out of it feet first, with a hole in my head
you could put your fist through. I don't threaten nobody, but I'll have
my money or I'll die right here.'
"'You say you don't threaten,' says he suspiciously. 'Aint that what
you're saying now--something darned like a bluff?'
"'No,' says I, 'it aint. I don't threaten,' and I turned my right hip
round towards him where I had my pistol slung. 'I'll hold up my hands
and you can take away this pistol if you like,' and I threw up both my
arms over my head.
"'Put down your hands,' says he quietly, 'I don't want to take your
pistol.' There were mirrors all round the room, and as I turned I caught
sight of my face, and though I felt red-hot I could see I was as white
as a sheet, and my eyes like coals of fire. Truth to tell, I was mad.
'Don't take things too hard,' says he, 'it'll come right. I know just
how you feel. I've been busted myself more nor once. Look here, young
man, I've rather taken a liking to you. I'm going to set you going
again. I'll give you a thousand dollars out of my own pocket, and
that'll start you, and all I'll ask is----'
"'You'll give h----l!' I burst out. 'I'm not a beggar! I don't want no
man's charity. I want my money--six thousand two hundred and fifty
dollars in greenbacks--neither more nor less. That's all.'"
Stephens paused. The vividness of his own recollections, excited by the
recital of the incident, had flushed his face and quickened his
breathing. His pipe had gone out, and he signalled to the boy for
another coal to relight it. Manuelita sprang up, ran to the kitchen
hearth, snatched a coal from it, and gave it to the boy to carry in.
Don Nepomuceno, keenly interested, leaned forward with his hands on his
knees. "Yes," he said, "yes. Gambling makes much trouble. I know it, for
I was a great gambler myself. There were four years that I gambled a
great deal, when I was sowing my wild oats." He nodded with the
sententiousness of a reformed character, who yet relished the
reminiscence. "It's a bad thing, very bad. But young men will be young
men. Now, there's my son Andrés, he gambled a great deal too much last
winter. But, look you, I am keeping that young man now out in camp with
the sheep herd, to see after the peons. The lambing season is just
coming on, and they are going off up the Valle Grande, where there is
much green grass. That is far away from the settlements; he can't get
into much trouble up there, can he?" and the father chuckled with
self-satisfaction over his ingenious little manoeuvre. "But here, I am
interrupting you, Don Estevan, and I want to hear the rest of your
story. Please excuse me, and continue."
"Well," resumed Stephens, "the upshot of it was he saw I was in earnest.
So I was. I expected to die right there. If he'd attempted to leave that
room, I'd have jumped him, and then they'd have killed me. I didn't
mind, I was so wound up. He turns to me, and says he, 'I believe I'm
going to do a thing that I never did before, young man. I'm going to
give you back that money that your partner lost of yours.' He went to a
safe he had in the corner, unlocks it, takes out a roll of notes and
brings 'em to the table. 'Jake,' he sung out to his man through the
wall, 'you can put away that shot-gun, it aint needed.'
"He counts out to me the full amount and hands it over.
"'Mr. Frenchy,' says I, 'you're a gentleman. I'll never forget this the
longest day I live.'
"'No more'll I,' says he, with a dry grin on his face. 'The laugh's on
me this time, I think,' he says, 'and I can tell you that aint the case
very often.'
"'I think likely,' says I, getting up to go. 'Good morning, mister; will
you shake hands?'
"'That I will,' says he; and we shook.
"'Look here,' says he, holding me by the hand, 'I want to ask you one
thing more. If you thought you had the best right to this money why
didn't you go to a lawyer and enter suit for it?'
"'Go to a lawyer!' said I; 'what would I do that for? The law in
Montana's a thief; you know it, and everyone knows it.' So it was, Don
Nepomuceno. The head of the ladrones there was the regular, lawful,
elected sheriff of Helena; the road-agents ran the country in fact.
"'No,' says I to Mr. Frenchy, 'I didn't want no lawyer. I heard say you
were a gentleman, and I thought I'd give you a chance to prove it, and
I'm glad I did.'"
Stephens took a few draws at his pipe; the excitement into which he had
worked himself over his story was passing off now the climax was over.
"Well," he resumed, "I went back to my hotel and I woke Rocky. I told
him we must part, and I offered to divide. He wouldn't quite do that,
but he took a thousand dollars off me. He was mighty penitent, but I
told him I'd no use for such a pard any more. I was sick of Montana
altogether, and concluded to skip. I paid my hotel bill, went over to
Frenchy's and made him a present of my cayuse, and I donated over to him
my share in every claim I had located in Montana to compensate him for
what he had lost by giving up the half of Rocky's losings. I believe
he's made a pot of money out of some of those claims since. I took the
stage for Green River City, and then for Denver, and I got through safe
without being held up. I salted down most of my money into Denver real
estate, which pays me a fair interest, and part I've used in paying my
way while I've been prospecting in Southern Colorado and Northern New
Mexico. And that's how I come to be here."
"Thank you, Don Estevan, thank you," said the Mexican. "It is most
interesting; but I wonder you can think of going back to such a
_compañero_. It is a very perilous idea."
"Oh, well," answered Stephens carelessly, as he rose to take his
departure, "meeting him isn't the same thing as going and doubling up
with him again. I'll be apt to know more about that when I see him."
But Manuelita's heart gave a little painful throb at the discovery that
this man, in whom she was fast learning to take an interest too great
for her own peace of mind, could return so lightly to a life that had
already brought him into such dangers, and could depart apparently
without thinking of her, or of what his loss might mean to her. He did
indeed belong to another world.
His mule was brought out and saddled, and his belt once more buckled on,
with the revolver hanging low on his right hip. He warmly grasped Don
Nepomuceno's hand at parting, and with a smile and a bow and his hat
doffed to the ladies, he swung himself into the saddle and rode away.
Don Nepomuceno and his sister stood in the great doorway at the entrance
to the courtyard, looking after his retreating form. He rode with the
long stirrup and erect military seat of one who had seen service in a
United States cavalry regiment, no bad school for horsemanship; his fine
figure and his athletic frame showed off to great advantage. A hundred
yards away, at the bend of the road, he turned in his saddle to wave his
hat once more in a final adieu, and the warm sunlight kissed his
profusion of golden curls. Manuelita ran back into the house that her
aunt might not detect the emotion betrayed by her quivering lip. But the
elder lady had her gaze steadily directed towards the parting guest.
"_Ah, que hombres tan aventureros, si, son estos!_" she said--"What bold
adventurers they are, those men!"
"True indeed," answered her brother, "'tis most true. For myself, I hate
the Americans, most of them, but admire this one, and I like him too.
But he is set on this life of adventure. I sounded him on the matter; I
even hinted to him that it was full time for him to marry and settle
down. But he would none of it."
"_Es hombre muy frio_"--"He is a very cold man"--said the Mexican
woman, and there was a spice of scorn as well as regret in her tone. She
despised a man who was a laggard in love, and her spoken judgment had
coincided with Manuelita's thought.
"It is true, it is most true," assented her brother. "He is cold. These
Americans are not impassioned in the love of women as we are. The chill
of their frozen North is in the very marrow of their bones. They are not
like unto us of Mexico and the South."
Those who know them best will bear witness that, whether they are
descended from Spanish _conquistadores_, from the devoted warriors of
Montezuma, the passionate hearts of the sons and daughters of Mexico
prove them in very truth to be Children of the Sun.