THE ROD DESCENDS
The cacique made straight for the pueblo, driving his wretched prisoner
before him. The poor girl, sick at heart and stupefied with grief and
fatigue, picturing to herself Felipe dead of his wounds or drowning
himself in his despair, submitted unresistingly to the blows and the
reproaches of her father. He was the stronger; how could she resist? She
let herself be driven back like a strayed beast of burden over the same
leagues of burning mesa and sandy ravine that she had traversed in the
coolness of the night under the silence of the stars. Then she had her
lover's arms round her and his voice whispering words of love in her
ear; now she shrank before bitter curses and the stinging lash. Yet
never did she open her lips to utter a word in self-defence or a plea
for pardon. Only she kept saying over and over to herself in time to the
hoof-beats of the horse, "He may beat me, he may kill me, but Ignacio I
won't have." Even sunk in misery as she was, she found a surprising
comfort in steeling herself to endure, and swearing to be true to
herself and to Felipe.
There is a limit to the staying powers of even the toughest of Indian
ponies, and by the time the cacique and his captive had covered half the
distance back to Santiago, the horse of the storekeeper which he was
mounted upon, and his own which carried his daughter, were both showing
painful signs of exhaustion. The cacique, unwilling to run the risk of
injuring his own animal, left the trail and made for a spring that he
knew of a few miles off to one side, near the foot of the mountains,
where they found both water and grass. Here, in a sullen silence, they
remained, till long after the sun had set and the weary day ended. The
cacique was nursing his wrath till he should have got her safely home
again, when he would make an example of her. Not till the Great Bear had
sunk well below the pole did they remount their now rested steeds and
set out once more for the pueblo; it was grey dawn when they came in
sight of it at last, and presently the well-known step-like outline of
the terraced roofs of Santiago showed sharp and clear among the peach
orchards ahead of them. As they entered its precincts they passed
through quite a crowd of onlookers; they had been observed descending
from the mesas, and natural curiosity had brought numbers to see the
excitement. Poor Josefa dropped her head in shame to escape the hard,
inquisitive looks.
They stopped at her father's door. He pulled her roughly from the
saddle, pushed her inside, and giving the horses to two of the boys, he
entered after her, shut the door, and bolted it. He advanced towards her
with glowing eyes. The blows he had given her on the road had only
whetted his passion. "Now, you she-devil," said he, "I'll teach you to
run away from me."
He flung her to the ground and stood over her. The cruel rawhide
descended again and again. The eager crowd outside was squeezing up
against the door and the little close-barred lattice window, anxious to
see as much as possible of the exciting scene inside. They had no
notion of interfering. On the contrary, it seemed to them entirely
natural that a father should chastise his disobedient daughter. "If he
didn't, who was to?"--that was the way they would have put it.
Among the crowd was Tito. Tito was a friend of Felipe's, and what was a
source of curiosity to others was maddening to him. There came into his
mind the thought of the American, and he resolved to call him to the
rescue.
Stephens, after despatching his letters, as he believed, on the previous
day, had returned to the house of Don Nepomuceno. He had done all he
could to set the proper authorities in motion, and now, finding that the
Navajos had taken themselves off and not returned, so that it was
impossible to go on with the negotiations, he took his leave of the
Sanchez family and hastened back to the pueblo. The more he thought of
the fury the cacique had displayed in the morning, the more uneasy he
felt as to what might happen when he should overtake Felipe and Josefa.
But when he learnt, on his arrival, that nothing further was known since
the cacique had galloped away on their tracks, he settled in his mind
that no news was good news, and waited quietly for matters to develop
themselves. He rose before dawn the following morning, only to be told
once more that nothing had been heard of the fugitives or of the
cacique, and he was now busy wiping out his rifle, when there came a
hasty knock at the door, and, forgetful of the bulldog, Tito burst
headlong into the room. "Oh, Don Estevan!" he exclaimed breathlessly,
"Salvador is back, and he is beating his daughter like fury. Perhaps he
will kill her."
"The dickens you say!" said the American, dropping his work abruptly
and making for the door. "Where's Felipe?"
"I don't know," answered Tito. "He's not there. Perhaps the cacique has
killed him."
Tito knew nothing of the sort, but the temptation to deepen the shadows
of a harrowing tale is quite irresistible.
"Where are they?" said Stephens, as soon as they were in the open air.
"Here, in his house," cried Tito eagerly, leading the way.
Stephens paused and stood irresolute. "After all, it's none of my
funeral," growled he to himself. "I haven't any call to interfere. And I
haven't got any weapon on me neither." He turned back to get his pistol,
but paused again. "No," he said, "I don't want it. Maybe I sha'n't do
anything, and if I do, I'd better go through on my nerve." He knew that
an appeal to physical force was idle where the odds were one against a
hundred, and that his only chance lay in moral influence.
He followed Tito. It was plain enough where the scene was taking place
by the crowd at the door. Stephens went up. The sound of blows was
audible from inside, but no cry was heard from the victim. "Where are
the chiefs? Where are Tostado and Benito and the rest?" he asked. He
would gladly have had the support of the seniors of the village, but
they were much too dignified to appear at this performance. The mob
consisted of boys, young men, and some of the poorer and less
well-thought-of people.
No one answered Stephens's question. He listened; the blows continued.
"He can't be allowed to murder her," he cried. "The whole pueblo will
get into a row with Government if that happens." He collared two or
three boys out of the press. "Here you, Jose, Tomas, Juan Antonio, run
and fetch Tostado here and the other chiefs. Say I want them to come."
The boys obeyed him; and the American, squeezing into the gap he had
made in the crowd, knocked loudly at the door. There was no answer to
the knock, but the blows stopped. He knocked again, calling, "Hullo,
Salvador! Hullo there!"
"Look out, Don Estevan," called out some of the boys. "He's furious.
Maybe he'll go for you."
He listened for an answer, but none was given. Then came the sound of
the whip again. Stephens shouted again, but in vain. He looked round for
the chiefs. There was no sign of any of them yet.
"I can't stand this any longer," said he. "Give me room, you fellows."
He stood back four or five feet from the door, and raising his right
foot dashed it against the lock.
The fastenings were old and the door flew open. He stepped over the
threshold and entered. The crowd behind him hung back. In the middle of
the floor, full length on her face, lay the form of Josefa. Her arms
were bare; she had thrown them up to protect her head, and the marks of
the whip were only too visible. She lay perfectly silent and still, a
slight quivering of her limbs alone showing that she was alive. The
Indian stood across her with his uplifted whip in his hand. He glared
fiercely at the American who advanced towards him.
Stephens did not meet the cacique's eye. He was looking down at the
prostrate figure on the ground. "So you've brought her back, Salvador,"
he remarked in an unruffled, every-day voice.
"Yes, I have," he replied brutally; "and I've given her something to
keep her from ever running away again."
"It looks like it," said Stephens.
He took one hand out of his pocket, stooped down, and felt her head. "It
looks like she'd never run anywhere again," he said.
He did not really believe that she was killed, but he thought it politic
to assume so. His position placed him absolutely at the mercy of the
Indian; but his voice, his manner, and his action conveyed the
assumption that it was absolutely impossible that the Indian should
dream of attacking him.
His coolness succeeded. The cacique lowered his whip and stepped back,
while Stephens moved the girl's arms gently from her head. They fell
limp on the earthen floor.
Stephens had seen some wild doings in Californian mining towns, but he
never had seen a woman beaten in his life. Those limp arms sent a queer
thrill through him. A sudden fury rose within him, but he mastered it.
He felt her head all over slowly and carefully to see if the skull was
fractured--as indeed it might well have been had she been struck with
the loaded whip-handle. This gave him time to think of his next move.
"If you've killed her, you'll be hanged for it, Salvador," he said at
last, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. "You and she are not citizens,
but you'll be hanged all the same. The law of the Americans reaches
here; understand that."
The Indian, whose passion was really more under control than seemed to
be the case, was somewhat cowed at Stephens's deliberate statement, but
he rejoined sullenly, "She's not dead. Lashes don't kill."
"You will have to answer for it if she dies," said Stephens getting up.
He had satisfied himself that the girl was not seriously injured.
"Not to you then," said the Indian, his courage reviving, when he
realised that the threat was, after all, blank cartridge, seeing that
the girl was alive. He tried to work himself into a rage again. "What do
you break into my house for and interfere with me? I'll do what I like
with my own." He stepped forward close to Stephens, between him and
Josefa. "Go out, or I'll kill you!" he said, raising his voice to a tone
of fury.
For a moment the American paused, uncertain. The Indian was a powerful
man, full as big and strong as himself, well armed with knife, pistol,
and loaded whip, to say nothing of his fifty friends outside the door.
The hesitation was momentary. "I can't leave this girl to that brute's
mercy," he said to himself. "Perhaps I can back him down."
He looked Salvador square in the eyes. "Where's Felipe?" said he calmly.
"You must answer for him, too. Have you killed him?"
"None of your business," said the Indian roughly. "Be off!" and he
raised his hand.
At this moment Josefa, hitherto as still as a corpse, turned her face
from the floor, but without rising. She looked up at Stephens. "He gave
him two shots," she said, in a voice wonderfully steady considering the
pain she was enduring. "I saw him fall."
"Then I arrest you for the murder of Felipe. You are my prisoner. Give
up your arms."
The only answer the cacique made to this demand was to take out his
revolver, but instead of surrendering it he thrust the muzzle in
Stephens's face, cocking it as he did so.
The steady gaze of the American met, without quailing, the black,
flashing eyes of the Indian. Grey eyes against black, white man against
red, the strife is as old as the history of the continent they stood
upon; perhaps it will last as long.
"You can kill me, I know, of course," said the American, speaking very
slowly and distinctly; "but you can't kill all the soldiers of the
Government. You may kill me to-day, but to-morrow the soldiers will come
from Santa Fé and take you prisoner; and if you make your people resist
they will destroy you. The Navajos were twenty thousand, but the
soldiers conquered them. You are only three hundred. They will conquer
you and take you away as they did the Navajos, as they did the
Jicarillas, as they have done the Modocs." He raised his left hand very
gently and took hold of the pistol barrel. "Don't destroy your people,
Salvador," he continued. "You know I wish them well. Loose it."
The Indian's grasp relaxed; he drew a deep breath and stepped back.
Stephens lowered the pistol to his own right hand, muzzle upwards,
uncocked it, and placed it in his waist-belt.
"Now come with me to my room," said he, taking him gently but firmly by
the arm. The struggle for the mastery was over; the Indian had yielded;
he obeyed unresistingly. As they stepped out of the house, Stephens said
to Tito, "Tell the women to see to the girl."
Outside they found Tostado and the other chiefs approaching--not too
fast. It was very plain that they did not want to interfere in the
matter. Stephens took his man towards them.
"Look here, Tostado," said he as soon as they met, "I have arrested
Salvador for shooting Felipe. I am going to take him to Santa Fé, to the
agent and to the governor. Now I want some of you to go along and see
that it is all right and square."
Stephens had been reflecting during the course of the night on the
events of the previous day, and it had occurred to him that accidents
did sometimes happen, and that his letters to the governor and the
general might possibly go astray. He had no special reason to suspect
what Mr. Backus had actually done, but he had a general feeling of
uneasiness with regard to the San Remo post-office. The idea had been
already in his mind to go to Santa Fé and lay the affair of the Navajos
before the authorities in person, and now this difficult matter of the
arrest of the cacique was a double reason for doing it.
The Indians began to converse among themselves.
"Come along to my room, then, and talk it over," said Stephens, and he
went ahead with his prisoner, reluctantly followed by the chiefs.