A SQUAW FOR A FEE
All day Felipe remained in the wheat patch. At noon he ate his lunch of
bread and dried flesh down by the river instead of going back to the
pueblo. At intervals during the day he came to the edge of the bank in
order to see that the mare and the remaining mule were all right, and
not trying to get up the bank into the crops. He might have gone off to
talk, for a change to other Indians, who were working in their fields,
but he did not care to. His heart was too sore; he wanted to be alone.
He thought and he thought, but all to no purpose. He ended by saying to
himself, "Well, there's one day more. I'll see Josefa to-night, and
we'll talk it over."
A wild idea floated through his brain of taking one of Don Estevan's
animals without his leave, but he knew it was wild. He believed Don
Estevan would shoot anyone that did so, and he did not mean to incur
that penalty. The only rational scheme he could think of was to run off
in the night to the sierra, find the horse herd next day, get his
father's horse and start back with it, but instead of coming straight to
the pueblo, to lie hid in the foothills of the sierra till night time,
and then slip down and get Josefa to come. But he knew that on the
morrow, when his father missed him, there would be a noise made and he
might be followed, in which case his plan might miscarry, the more so
that his disappearance would cause a doubly sharp watch to be kept on
Josefa. With melancholy eyes he watched the sun sink lower and lower in
the west. Precious time was passing, and he was doing nothing and could
do nothing to bring his will to pass. He burned with desire to act, and
he was helpless.
Before sunset he caught the mare and mule, and took them up to the
pueblo in order to put them in the corral for the night. This was the
time of day when Josefa was likely to be fetching water from the ditch,
which had been empty all the morning on account of the blasting, and in
the hope of meeting her Felipe led them through the street on which her
father's house faced.
And where had Josefa been all this time? She had been hard at work at
home, under the vigilant eye of her step-mother. Grinding corn meal was
the labour which she was set to do, a good steady task to give to a
young person of rebellious disposition. The Indian hand-mill is a large,
smooth stone, something like a flagstone, set sloping in a box on the
floor. The grinding is always done by a woman, who kneels on the ground,
and bending over the mill rubs the corn up and down with a smaller stone
held in both her hands. Hard work it is indeed for back and arms, but
the Pueblo women keep it up for hours. Their good health and fine
physique are largely due to this vigorous exercise.
Josefa worked away over the mill till her back ached, while her
step-mother, at the other end of the room sat at a hand-loom, on which
she was slowly weaving a gorgeous blanket of many colours for the
cacique's next official appearance. Josefa thought as she toiled at her
work; and her mind reviewed over and over again different alternatives.
From the bottom of her heart she hoped that Felipe would be successful
in getting a horse from the American. If he didn't, she did not know
what she should do. One thing only was certain in her mind. Have Ignacio
she would not. They might starve her, and they might beat her, but they
should not force her to be his wife. What was the use of being a woman
of Santiago if she mightn't have some say in the matter? Why should she
be treated as a slave, as the savage Utes treated their women? "I don't
care," she said to herself, and as she said it she stiffened her back,
and rubbed away at the refractory corn harder than ever. "I won't. He's
old, and he's ugly, and I hate him. I know he beat his first wife--he
did. I won't have him."
She glowed with the heat of her scorn and indignation; but all the time
a little unbelieving spirit in the recesses of her mind kept asking in a
sort of undertone, "How will you like being beaten if you disobey? How
will you like it; how will you like it?" And as she cooled off from her
glow, and thought of another side to the picture,--an intercepted
flight, rough seizure, angry words, and furious blows,--she quaked. She
had not been beaten since she was a child, and not much then, for the
Pueblo Indians are good to their little ones; but she knew that her
father was within his rights in giving her to whom he chose, and that
those who broke the laws of the community were liable to the lash. She
had never seen it done severely. All she had seen was two or three cuts
with a whip, administered publicly in the street after a severe scolding
by the marshal of the village, to some misdemeanant who had let his ass
trespass among the standing corn, or who had otherwise broken some of
their simple rules; but she knew with what severity, in private, serious
offences were treated, and in the depths of her brave little heart she
quaked.
But the quaking fit passed off, too, as the indignant glow had done;
perhaps the hard work helped her through. "They can't do more than kill
me," said she to herself. "I can stand it. But have old Ignacio I
won't."
Then she thought of Felipe. She had not much fear for him. His own
father certainly wouldn't beat him. For one thing he couldn't, for the
son was the stronger; and as for Ignacio, she fairly laughed to herself
at the idea of the ugly old fellow attacking Felipe. "Why, Felipe would
put him on the ground in a moment, and keep him there, too, as long as
he wanted," she thought, and felt a grim satisfaction at the idea. The
only danger she feared for him was lest he should get furious and use
his knife, and kill Ignacio, and be hanged for it. But Felipe had
promised her never, never to do such a thing, and he would keep his
word. Such a thing had not happened in the pueblo for forty years--not
since old Fernando was a youth, when he had quarrelled in a fit of
jealousy with another Indian and stabbed him, and had been arrested, and
afterwards pardoned.
Towards evening it was reported that the ditch was running again, and
Josefa and her step-sisters went out to draw water. With the great
earthen jars on their heads, they filled out one after another, and
marched off to the waterside. Here they lowered their burdens to the
ground, and slowly filled them by dipping up cupfuls of water with their
gourds. There were several other women at the waterside doing the same
thing, and there was much animated talk about the blasting of the
acequia--for they had heard the explosions quite distinctly at the
village--and about the improvement of the ditch, which was fuller now
than it had ever been before.
Then some of the younger girls took to playing and splashing each other,
and one said something sly to Josefa about Ignacio. She flushed up and
was on the point of flying into a rage, but calmed herself in a moment,
returned a laughing retort, and joined in the fun and the splashing. Her
step-sisters were surprised, for they well knew her feelings on the
subject of the intended marriage; but they supposed that perhaps she was
growing more reconciled to the idea of it.
At last the welcome interval of fun and gossip came to an end. One by
one the jars, now full and very heavy, were carefully elevated on the
heads of their owners, the party broke up, and the women returned to
their respective homes. Josefa was hoping for the appearance of the
figure she desired to see, and lingered as long as possible; but when
the rest of the party had assumed their burdens she could delay no
longer, and, taking up hers, moved after them, the last of the file.
As they re-entered the village she saw with joy that her manoeuvre had
succeeded. Felipe was strolling very slowly, and apparently quite
unconcerned, up the street, leading the mare and mule towards the
corrals.
They dared not speak, but they had devised a little code of signals of
their own. A shake of the head conveyed to her, "I have failed"; a crook
of the forefinger, "I am coming to-night." An answering crook from her
said to him, "I will meet you"; and they passed on their ways, no one
but themselves the wiser for the little exchange of messages that had
taken place. But Josefa's heart sank lower still as she crossed the
threshold and thought that one of the precious three days was already
gone, and no means of escape was yet provided.
At sunset her father returned. The acequia round the point had been
properly embanked on its lower side, and the stone dislodged by the
blasts cleaned out of its channel. He was in high good humour at the
success of the work, which would render memorable his term of office. He
brought his saddle indoors, and, taking down a key from a sort of shelf
of wickerwork, which was slung by cords from the roof beams, he took his
horse to the stable. He did not keep him at the corrals, where the
prospector kept his mare and mules, but was the proud possessor of a
mud-built stable, with a lock on the door.
His coming set Josefa thinking again. "Our great difficulty," said she
to herself, "is a horse. Why not take my father's? If I could only get
the key we could manage it. I could not indeed get down the saddle and
take it out of the house without making a noise, but Felipe must find a
saddle. And if I can get the key and we take my father's horse, he will
have nothing to pursue us on, which is double reason for taking it."
Filled with this idea, she got some more corn and began to grind again,
so that when her step-mother went into the kitchen to prepare the
evening meal she was left alone in the outer room. Her father came back
from the stable and replaced the key on the shelf, and then went out
again without speaking to her. Now was her chance. She darted silently
across the room, seized the key, and flew back to her work so quickly
that no one in the next room could have suspected what she had done.
She was so bright and cheerful that evening that her family thought she
must have ceased her opposition and become reconciled to the match.
"Ah," said her step-mother, "if Ignacio only gives you work enough, and
doesn't spoil you, he'll have a docile wife as any in the pueblo."
Josefa laughed aloud. "He will have a docile one when he gets me!" she
said. But she laughed to think how blank they would look at daybreak
next morning when they found her flown.
After supper the cacique and the chiefs went in a body to call upon
Stephens. They entered the room and seated themselves against the wall
on the ground, sitting on sheepskins or on mats which they had brought
with them. Stephens passed round the tobacco-bag and some corn husks cut
square for cigarette papers. Presently old Tostado began to speak.
"We are very grateful, and we give you thanks, Sooshiuamo," said he,
"for the work that you have done for us to-day. Ever since the year of
the great eclipse of the sun, which is the most ancient thing the oldest
man of us can remember, the point of rocks has been that which has given
trouble to us all, and our fathers told us it was so when they were
little boys. We have had to be always mending it, and then just when we
had most need of water it always broke. Then you came among us to stay.
You know that we like to live apart from the rest of the world. We do
not like to have strangers come here to live. Our fathers never allowed
it, and they have handed down to us as sacred the command that we
should never allow it either. We have obeyed their command until now,
and never till this day have we proposed to make an exception to our
rule in favour of anybody. The Mexicans, and others who wish, may live
at San Remo, and they may live at Rio Feliz, and at other places in the
world, where they belong, but here, No. It is not our custom. We do not
want it, and we have the right to prevent it. When our fathers made
peace with the old kings of Spain, many generations ago, they had the
right given them for ever to keep all strangers away. It is written in
our grant, and it is a very good law to have. See how in Abiquiu the
Indians let the Mexicans come in, and now they are a sort of mixed
people, and not proper Indians at all. But we are the Indians of
Santiago, and we wish to remain the same. But you came among us, and we
gave you a name, and you lived quietly and did not interfere with
anyone, and we saw that you were good. Then we gave you leave to stop on
and to go and hunt in the mountain the wild cattle, which are the
children of the cattle of the Indians. And you stayed with us all this
winter past, and you have been happy here among us; but now you say that
you must go far away again, following your business. Now we say this:
you have done a thing to-day that we are glad of, and our children will
be glad of, and their children, too, for ever. Now we say this: you live
alone, and life alone is very lonesome. It is good that you should give
up the life of wandering so far and being so lonesome. It is good that
you should live here with us, and we will build you a house, and we will
give you a wife, a young one and a good one, whichever one you please
among the girls, and we will assign you pieces of land of the village,
and you shall have it to cultivate the same as we do. If you do not want
to work with the plough and the hoe yourself, you have money and you can
hire others to work. And you shall live here safe and at ease, and if we
want to do more to the ditch, or to keep the smallpox away, you shall do
it, because you are wise and know the arts of the Americans. We have
talked it over, and that is what we think." And he closed his oration
and folded his blanket about him, not without dignity.
Stephens was sitting on the side of his bed, leaning forward and looking
down, with his pipe in his mouth, when Tostado began his speech. As it
proceeded, he stopped smoking, and still sat looking thoughtfully on the
ground, holding his pipe in his hand, and a curious smile came over his
features.
"People seem determined to make a squawman out of me somehow," he
meditated. "First a lying stage-driver goes and swears to Sam Argles
that I'm one already, and now here comes this worthy Tostado with an
extremely public offer of the pick of the bunch. Well, how am I going to
decline? Shall I say, 'Thanks very much, my good friend, but I'm not
taking any, this time'? Pretend to blush and be embarrassed, and play
the funny man generally? Not much, I guess. My jokes with these people
don't seem to come off. They're not their style. No, I'll just refuse
civilly; but, seeing that they're making themselves so particularly
sweet to me at this moment, I believe I'll trot out my best card and ask
for the mine."
He waited till the applause that followed Tostado's peroration had quite
died away, but instead of rising to make a formal speech in reply, he
remained sitting on the side of the bed.
"I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, Tostado," he began
conversationally, looking at the friendly face of the Turquoise headman,
"and to all of you chiefs here present,"--he cast a comprehensive glance
round the circle,--"for the good opinion you say you have of me, and for
your proposal that I should settle down among you. I take it very kind
of you that you offer me a wife and a home here. But I'm not quite
prepared to settle at present. You said, Tostado, that I had money; so I
have, but only a little, not enough, not as much as I want. Now, I've
got this to say to you. There's just one thing that would induce me to
remain here, and not go away. Don't be startled, it's a very simple
matter; you know that I'm a miner, and live by finding and working
mines. Well, I want you to give me leave to open and work your silver
mine, the silver mine that you have up in the mountains, and that you
keep so carefully hidden. If you'll make a contract with me to do that,
I'll stay on here and work the mine for you. What do you say?"
Never was the admirable facial self-control of the red man better
exemplified than in the reception of this speech. To the Indians the
very name of mines in connection with themselves was a horror. They had
awful traditions of ancient Spanish cruelties, of whole villages
stripped of their young men, who were forcibly carried off to work in a
slavery which was degradation and death. Spanish enterprise in that line
had ceased with the exhaustion of the labour supply, and the
accumulation of water in the shafts which they had no steam-pumps to
remove. But the terror of those evil days lay upon the souls of the red
men. They had hidden those ancient shafts where their forefathers
laboured in the damp, unwholesome darkness, till sickness and misery
found their only respite in death. They guarded the secret of them
jealously, and never with their goodwill should they be reopened.
At the words of the American, the chiefs turned one to another with
looks of astonishment, and acted their little play admirably.
Tostado remained silent, and the cacique was the first to speak.
"Silver mine?" he innocently asked. "What silver mine?" thus ignoring
the fact that the prospector had broached the idea to him already. "_We_
have no silver mine. _We_ know nothing of such things. The Mexicans have
some, far away in the south. The Americans have some, far away there,"
he pointed to the north. "But there never have been any here, never. Is
it not true, my brothers?" He appealed to the circle of chiefs. There
was a chorus of replies: "It is true." "There never have been any."
"None of us ever heard of such things here."
"Nonsense, Salvador," retorted Stephens, laughing as good-humouredly as
he could by way of reassuring the suspicious redskins. "Everybody round
here knows that you fellows have a mine that you keep well covered up so
that nobody shall find it. Very sensible plan that of yours, too. Quite
right not to let other people get hold of it. I allow that. But you're
all wrong about one thing. You're afraid the Spaniards may come back and
force you to work in the mine again. No fear. The Spaniards have gone
for keeps, and the American Government has come, and it's going to stop.
There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of. I've heard of your mine;
now, you let me work it for you; I'll make money out of it for myself
and money for you. The money will buy you lots of cows and sheep and
horses, and improved ploughs and good guns, and all sorts of things. You
say you have got confidence in me, here's your chance to show it."
He might as well have expended his eloquence upon the dead adobe walls.
The chiefs stared at him vacantly. When Stephens ceased there was a
pause, and then Tostado took up the subject.
"It is quite true what you say, Sooshiuamo. You are our friend. The
American Government is our friend; it has protected us from the Mexicans
when they tried to ride roughshod over us, and we are grateful to the
American Government. But the stories about a silver mine are
foolishness. These Mexicans must have been yarning to you; they are idle
talkers. We have no mine. We never had a mine. We don't know anything
about mines, and never did." And again all the chiefs chorused:
"We know nothing of a mine; nothing whatever."
For a whole hour Stephens argued with them. Vain effort. No solid rock
was ever more impenetrable than an Indian who has made up his mind, and
the baffled and wearied prospector gave it up in despair.
His thoughts drifted away to earlier days when he first found himself in
the midst of that wonderful rush to the El Dorado of this century, the
Far Western goldfields. He thought of his hopes, his failures, and his
struggles; how he had always intended "when he had made his pile," to go
back East and marry a nice girl of his own race, and settle down
comfortably. When he had made his pile!--the will-o'-the-wisp that has
led many a man such a weary dance through the sloughs of life. He had to
admit to himself that he had lowered his figure. He had set it at first
at a million, a brownstone front, and a seat in the United States
Senate. It had come down step by step in the last ten years, till it
stood now at ten thousand dollars,--enough to buy a nice little place
back East, and stock it, and have something left on hand; but, alas! he
was not half-way yet even to that goal--and now there was offered him a
mud home, an Indian squaw, and a corn patch. "Not yet, I reckon," said
he to himself, with a grimmer smile than ever. "I've not come to that
quite yet. Not but what these Indians are the honestest and most
virtuous folks to live among that ever I knew. But I can't quite go
turning squawman yet."
"Much obliged to you, Tostado," said he in response to a renewed offer,
"but I don't want to settle down just now. No, thank you. I have
business to see after far away, beyond the country of the Navajos. Not
that I don't like you here. I consider you as my friends. You know that.
Perhaps some other day I may think about settling down, but now I have
other business. But I am much obliged to you, all the same."
"No," said the Indian; "it is we who are obliged to you for what you
have done for us. It is a great thing, and we are grateful to you for
it. There is nothing we would not do for you." And then he went on to
praise and compliment Stephens, and the Americans generally; for he was
no mean proficient in the art of oratory, and enjoyed doing what he knew
he could do well, and what his people admired him for.
Poor Stephens could not escape from the flow of language by quietly
walking off, as he had done in the morning; and though he wanted badly
to get free to finish reading his San Francisco weekly paper, he could
not be so discourteous as to cut the speech short abruptly. But all
things come to an end at last, and finally the chiefs, having made
speeches to their heart's content, took their leave, folded their
blankets around them, and filed off into the moonlight.