DRIVING A BARGAIN
And why was this debate between the American and the Navajos so stubborn
and tedious?
When two shrewd men are each determined to drive the best bargain he
can, and neither trusts the other, the diplomacy between a frontiersman
and a redskin may be as lengthy as if it were between rival ambassadors
of contending empires. In their secret hearts both Stephens and
Mahletonkwa were anxious to come to an understanding, but each thought
it politic to simulate comparative indifference, and not to give any
advantage to his opponent by betraying undue eagerness.
Stephens demanded at the outset the immediate restoration of the captive
to her father, safe and sound. Granted that, he was willing to promise
fair compensation for the Navajo who had been slain, and amnesty for the
subsequent outrage of carrying off the girl; and also he was ready in
person to guarantee these terms. He could offer no less, much as he
longed to see her abductors punished, because it was obvious that, as
long as they were not secure from retaliation, they would prefer to keep
possession of her to the last possible moment, and take their punishment
fighting.
To this first demand Mahletonkwa signified his willingness to agree,
but only on conditions. Stephens's offer was an amnesty and fair
compensation. That was precisely what he wanted. Fair compensation, plus
an amnesty. But the question arose, what was fair compensation? and here
for a time they split. Stephens maintained that Don Nepomuceno's offer
of a hundred and twenty-five dollars cash, was fair. Mahletonkwa would
not hear of it. His dead brother was worth a great deal more than that.
He had asked a thousand dollars for him, and a thousand dollars he
intended to have. Apart from that he had no use for the captive.
"Pay the bill, and take the girl," that was the sum and substance of his
argument; "and if her father won't pay, will you?"
Right here the American saw it was essential to make a stand. If he
weakly yielded to this preposterous claim, Mahletonkwa would be sure to
conclude that he was scared into acquiescence and could have no soldiers
or Indian scouts in any force to back him up. That being so, most likely
the Navajo would raise his terms, and ask perhaps double, treble,
quadruple,--anything he pleased in short,--till the whole affair became
a farce! No, Mahletonkwa's thousand-dollar demand was almost certainly a
bluff. Then why shouldn't he try a bluff, too?
"I can't do it, Mahletonkwa," said he with an air of finality, but
speaking more in sorrow than in anger, as one who sees good business
slipping through his fingers. "I'd like to come to terms first-rate, but
I can't meet you there. You're too stiff in your figures. It's not a
deal."
He thought of the girl sitting there all alone in the cave, and his
kindly heart longed to say, "What's a thousand dollars, more or less?
Hang it all, here, take it! or rather, take my word for it, and let's be
off home." But prudence whispered, No.
Mahletonkwa calmly repeated his demand. He, too, thought it wisest to
play the part of the close-fisted trader, and show no hurry to make a
bargain.
"Well, look here then, Mahletonkwa and Navajos all," said the American,
appealing directly to the cupidity of the followers as well as of the
chief. "It's a big thing I've offered you on my own hook already in this
matter of the amnesty. It's a big thing for me to say I'll stand between
you and Uncle Sam" (he did not say Uncle Sam, but the Great Father at
Washington); "but I stick by that, and I'll do it. And I've offered you
payment for the dead man, same as Don Nepomuceno, a hundred and
twenty-five dollars; and you say it aint enough. Now, I can't meet you
the whole way, but I'll raise my offer a bit, and you can take it or
leave it. It's my last word." He rose to the level of the part he was
playing, and threw himself into it with all the sincerity he was master
of. "You see that rifle"--he pointed to the long, heavy, muzzle-loading
hunter's rifle that lay beside Mahletonkwa's right knee--"well, I'll
give you the weight of that rifle in silver dollars. Me, looking as I
do, I'll see that you get them. There's my word upon it. This is my
personal offer to compensate you for your dead brother. You shall have
silver dollars enough to weigh down that rifle on the scales. I don't
know how many that'll take, but it's bound to be a right big pile. Now
understand me, you chaps, we'll take a balance, a fair and square
balance, and put the rifle in one scale and pour silver dollars into the
other till the rifle kicks the beam. _Sabe?_"
The sons of the desert looked one at another, and curious excited
sounds came from their lips, and significant gestures were made. Some of
them had actually seen scales used to weigh out the rations at Fort
Defiance, and they quite understood what they were for, and made the
thing clear to the less instructed among them. The American saw that his
offer had created an impression, and he did his best to rub it in.
"You'll find it pay you to accept, Mahletonkwa," he said. "You'll be
able to fix things in grand style with all that silver. Here, let's have
a look at that rifle of yours, and let me heft it." He put out his hand
cautiously--no objection was offered; he laid it on the piece--still no
objection; he raised the rifle slowly on both palms, dandling it, as it
were, up and down. "Why, it's a real heavy gun. It don't weigh less than
twelve or thirteen pounds, I reckon. I tell you that'll come to no end
of a lot of silver; all silver dollars, mind you; and it'll take
hundreds of them, you bet, to weigh down this gun." He turned his eyes
from one to the other of the redskins, and they seemed to understand him
as he laid it down again beside the chief.
It was clear that his way of putting it had a great effect on the
Navajos. To tell the truth, most of Mahletonkwa's followers had by this
time begun to tire of their recent escapade. They had sallied out from
their own country under his leadership, at the summons of Ankitona, the
headman of their clan, to obtain the redress for the death of a member
of their clan called for by their peculiar religion. But so far they had
not taken much by their move. They had not as yet got any compensation;
they had carried off a Mexican girl; and now they were beginning to feel
that in doing so they had decidedly risked putting their heads in a
noose. They began to believe they were in danger of being surrounded by
United States soldiers, here in the Lava Beds, and were likely to have
an extremely unpleasant time of it ere long unless they succeeded in
escaping to a new hiding-place. The cool confidence shown by this
solitary man coming forward so boldly to treat with them convinced them
that he must have a strong force behind him. And now he was making an
offer of a complete amnesty, plus a heap of silver dollars. First one
and then another began to urge Mahletonkwa to close the bargain. He was
a chief, of course, and upon him, as such, rested the responsibility of
making decisions; but a Navajo chief is practically very much in the
hands of his followers. When actually under fire they may obey him well
enough, but when it comes to questions of policy, if the greater number
are dissatisfied with his schemes or his methods, they simply leave him,
and he finds himself deserted. He has no power to coerce them. Call this
anarchy, if you will, or call it liberty, it is at all events the very
opposite of despotism. No Navajo chief can play the despot; and
Mahletonkwa, conscious that his authority was slipping from him, acceded
to the terms, which indeed gave him nearly all he wanted.
"_Bueno_, Sooshiuamo", said he, using Stephens's Indian name in a
friendly way, "I accept your offer, and there shall be peace between us.
But you must agree to stay with us when we come out from the Lava Beds,
and you must go with us all the way to San Remo for the money, and you
must prevent any trouble with the soldiers or with the Mexicans if they
try to hurt us. You promise that?"
"Yes," said Stephens slowly, weighing every word of the Indian's
speech, "I'll promise that. I'll see you safe to the settlement and pay
you the money with my own hands. And if we meet any Americans or
Mexicans who are after you, I'll explain that it is peace, and they are
not to attack. I'll guarantee that much."
"Then," said the Indian, "it is peace between us; peace is made and
sure."
"Peace it is," said Stephens, rising; "and now by your leave I'll go and
tell the señorita, and then go and tell my men."
He hurried back to the cave where he had left her, and found her on her
knees. He had laughed at the orisons offered up by the Santiago people
before blasting the acequia; he did not laugh at hers.
She sprang up at his approach.
"We've fixed it all right," he said, "so don't you fret, señorita. I was
real sorry to have to keep you so long in suspense, but I couldn't well
help it. I'll explain all that to you later. But peace is made, and
we're going back to San Remo together, you and me, along with the
Navajos, and we'll start right away. But I've got to go over to where I
left my party yonder in the Lave Beds, and explain the whole arrangement
to them. Otherwise there might be considerable of a fuss. Now, don't you
fret," he took her hand again to reassure her, "you'll be all right, and
I won't be gone many minutes. You're sure, now, you won't get scared?"
"If you say you will come back," she answered, "I know you will come
back, and I will try to be brave till you do."
With one glad pressure of her hand and one more long look into her eyes
he turned away and left her. She watched his active steps as he
hastened across the oasis and sprang up the broken lava rocks beyond. On
the summit he turned and looked back in her direction, and waved his
hand as a signal to her that all was well. Five minutes later he bounded
down into the grassy opening where his mare was feeding with the four
horses of the Pueblos. The cacique and the three others ran to meet him.
"How have you succeeded?" exclaimed the cacique. "Who was that shooting?
Have you shot any of them?"
"Not me," replied Stephens. "I've been making peace, I have. I found
Mahletonkwa had just as lief trade as fight, and a bit more so. 'Ditto,'
says I to that, and just talked peace talk to him, and we made things
square. Cacique, you were plumb right about Whailahay; they haven't
harmed the girl. I've fixed it up with them about compensation for their
dear departed, and we 're all going back to San Remo together, to take
her home and get the silver for them. See?"
The cacique looked rather disconcerted. "I don't want to join company
with these Navajos out here," he said decidedly.
"Oh, I didn't mean you," rejoined the American; "I quite understand that
you might feel a delicacy in obtruding yourself on them out here in
No-man's-land. They might have heard of that little affair of the seven
Navajos in the sweat-house, eh? and this might seem a good time and
place to pay off old scores?" His spirits had gone up with a bound, and
he found it impossible not to chaff the cacique a little. "No, Cacique;
you brought me here upon their trail just like a smell-dog, as I wanted
you to do, and I've managed the rest of the business myself. Now, what
I want you to do is to take their back trail and meet Don Nepomuceno and
his party--they're sure to have found it again by now and to be
following it up--and you tell them how I've fixed things, and say the
señorita's all right and we'll meet them in San Remo. Stop, I'll write
it down here on a scrap of paper and you can take it to them; that'll be
best." He produced a pencil and a small note-book, tore out a leaf and
hastily wrote on it his message to the Mexican. "There, Cacique," said
he handing it to him, "give that to Don Nepomuceno when you see him, and
tell him the whole show. I'd like to have you wait and meet us at San
Remo if you get back there before us. _Hasta luego._"
He gathered up the riata of the mare, and started to pick his way with
her through the Lava Beds to the oasis where the Navajos were camped,
while the Pueblos speedily made themselves scarce in the opposite
direction.
By the time Stephens reached the camp the Navajos had collected their
scanty equipment and bound it on their saddles; they all took a long
drink of pure, cool water from the hidden "tinaja" or rock-cistern, and,
leading their animals, made the best of their way over the Lava Beds to
the open country. Stephens explained to Mahletonkwa before starting that
he had arranged for his party to return to San Remo by the route they
came.
"_Bueno_," said Mahletonkwa shortly, "and we will go by another. I know
many trails through the sierra; there is one that I like well, and I
will take you by it."
"Right you are," said Stephens, "that suits me. Lead on." His object now
was to avoid any chance of a collision between the Navajos and Mexicans
till they should meet at San Remo.
Manuelita walked beside him as they followed the winding and difficult
trail taken, by the Navajos through the Lava Beds, but as soon as they
emerged from them and found themselves on the smooth ground beyond, he
spread a blanket over the saddle to make it easy for her, and insisted
on her riding Morgana while he ran alongside.
After a while the leading Indians came to a halt, and were seen to be
examining the ground intently. When Stephens and the girl came up to
them he found that they had cut their own trail made by themselves the
previous day. But there were more hoof-marks in it now than those of the
eleven ponies, and they were busily studying the newer signs. Stephens
looked at them, too; they were undoubtedly the tracks of the pursuing
party under Don Nepomuceno; it was hard to say just how many of them
there were, as they were confused with those of the Indians, and the
Mexican horses being barefooted, like the Indian ponies, it was
impossible to distinguish them. But there were more than a dozen at
least, and not one of them wore shoes.
"No soldiers in this party," said Mahletonkwa, looking up at Stephens
suspiciously. United States army horses are always shod, as he well
knew.
"Certainly not," answered the American unhesitatingly. "These are not
the tracks of my party. I never was over this piece of ground before. My
scouts cut your trail farther on."
"You had the Santiago scouts with you?" said the Navajo; "I was sure of
that when you came to the Lava Beds so quick. Which of them did you
have?--the cacique?" His dark eyes snapped as he mentioned him.
"Miguel, perhaps, that tall, slim one with the scar on his cheek?" He
knew a good deal about the Santiago folk; after the submission of the
Navajos had ended the long wars, there had been some intercourse between
the former enemies.
Stephens thought it better not to give any names. "Oh, I got some good
trailers," he said easily; "but there are other Pueblos besides
Santiago, and there are trailers in all of them. Cochiti has men who are
first-class on reading signs."
"I know you had that Santiago cacique," said Mahletonkwa cunningly.
"Then if you think so, you'd better ask him to tell you about it when we
get back to the settlement," rejoined the American.
They entered the sierra a little before nightfall, and were soon
involved in a difficult and tortuous way amidst pine-crowned crags and
precipices. Sometimes their horses' feet clattered upon shady slopes of
débris; at times they trod softly upon a padded carpet of fir-needles.
They were traversing a little cañon just after sunset, when, nearly two
hundred yards away on the opposite side, the forms of a herd of deer
were silhouetted against the fading sky.
Instinctively Stephens threw up his rifle to his shoulder; he got a bead
as well as he could, though it was too dark to pick the exact spot on
the animal's side as he pressed the trigger, and at the sharp report the
band of dark forms disappeared as if by magic, but the loud "thud" of
the bullet proclaimed that one of them had been struck. Instantly he and
three of the Navajo young men dashed on foot across the little gorge and
scaled the opposite steep, Faro leading the way. The bulldog nosed
around for a moment where the deer had been, and as the climbers
emerged on top they heard him give one joyful yelp as he darted forward
on the scent; two minutes later they heard his triumphant bark, and when
they got up to the spot they found him over the dead carcass of a
yearling buck, shot through the lungs. It had run some five hundred
yards before it dropped, and the bulldog coming up had seized it by the
throat and finished the business.
The Indians were loud in praise of the dog, as their knives rapidly and
skilfully dressed and cut up the game, while Stephens looked on and
rewarded his pet with the tit-bits. All three of the Navajos spoke
Spanish well enough for him to understand them as they praised the dog,
but when they turned over the deer, and found the place where the
conical bullet had come out on the other side, they changed from Spanish
into Navajo, and significant laughter followed as they pointed out to
one another the two holes, and then pointed to Stephens's rifle.
Suddenly it flashed across him that they had got a joke on about
something, and that it was not a thing new to him. Their manner made him
think instantly of the day when he drove the nail, and Mahletonkwa
pointed to his Winchester and told the funny story--funny, that is to
say, for the Navajos--about the murder of the prospector. Though he
understood no word of what they said, their gestures were too full of
meaning for him to mistake them.
"I say," said he abruptly, but with seeming carelessness, "aint this the
place that Mahletonkwa told that story about? About the man who was shot
with his own rifle, you know?"
The young Indian who was stooping over the game stopped and withdrew his
hand from the deer. "What makes you think that?" he asked.
"Well," said Stephens, "he said it happened up in these mountains, and
I heard him say, also, that he was particularly fond of this trail we're
on. So I just guessed it might have been pretty nigh where we are now."
"So it was," said the Indian, whom Stephens had learned to know as
Kaniache, "it was right up this gulch where it opens out above." They
had crossed a divide in their chase after the wounded buck, and were in
another little cañon not unlike the one where they had left the rest of
the party. The darkness was increasing every minute, but the Indian knew
precisely where they were. Stephens marked the place in his memory as
well as he could, and resolved that he would return to it as soon as
might be, to seek out and bury the bones of the unfortunate victim of
Navajo treachery and cunning.
They gathered up the meat of their quarry, and hastening back to where
the rest of the party were waiting for them, they pushed on for fully
two hours by the light of the moon, in spite of the difficulty of the
way. Camp was made at last by a little stream in a park, and a fire was
lighted, though Mahletonkwa was so suspicious of being followed that he
put a couple of scouts to watch their back trail and signal the approach
of any possible pursuers.
Stephens sat down by the fire, and set to work roasting pieces of the
venison on spits of willow for Manuelita and himself. She was tired, but
not exhausted, and he could not but wonder at the power she exhibited of
enduring fatigue, she who ordinarily took no more exercise than that
involved in doing her share of the labours of the household, varied by
walking over to the store or paying a visit to a neighbour. But she came
of a tireless race. It might be said of the Spanish _conquistadores_,
that for them--
"The hardest day was never too hard, nor the longest day too long,"
and this endurance has descended to the women sprung from them as well
as to their sons.
Stephens aired for her benefit the only wraps he had to offer her, the
blankets that had been under and over the saddle; but he went to a clump
of young pines growing near, and with his hunting-knife hewed off a
quantity of the small shoots from the ends of the boughs.
"You'll never guess in a month of Sundays, señorita, what we call these
on the frontier," said he, as he proceeded to arrange them in neat
layers, to make for her an elastic couch. "Give it up? We call them
'Colorado feathers,' and they're no slouches in the way of feathers
neither. Besides, they say the smell of turpentine's mighty wholesome.
The doctors in Denver recommend camping out to the consumptives who come
out for their health, just that they may get the benefit of them. Spruce
makes the best, and it's the most aromatic."
"Here, you get out, Faro," he apostrophised his dog, who had as usual
promptly taken possession of the blankets as soon as they were spread
down, "you get out of that, that's not your place;" and he pushed him
off.
"Oh, don't hurt him!" cried the girl; "he likes it; let him stay."
"Well, all right, then, señorita," he said, pleased that his pet should
find favour, "if you don't mind having him there, he'll lie at your feet
and keep them warm; and now you'd better lie down and rest yourself all
you can, for we aint home yet, and you can bet it's a 'rocky road to
Dublin' through this sierra that we've got to go to-morrow"; and with
these words he turned away to the fire.
"But," cried she, looking at the provision he had made for her, "you
have kept no blanket for yourself; you must take one or you will
freeze." His generosity distressed her.
"No fear," he returned without looking at her, while he deliberately
settled himself down beside the fire and lit his pipe with a coal, "no
fear, señorita. I'm calculating to keep guard anyhow, and there's lots
of firewood here. That's the beauty of a mountain camp."
"No, thank you, Mahletonkwa," this was spoken to the chief, who at this
juncture came and offered him a blanket, being anxious to conciliate the
man whom he now depended on for so much, "not for me, thank you; _muchas
gratias_; I'm all right. I'm going to keep this fire warm, and watch the
'Guardias' circle round the North Star." The "Warders," two bright stars
of the Little Bear, act as the hour-hand of a clock which has the Pole
for its centre, and by them a frontiersman on night-herd knows when his
watch begins and ends.
The Indians, suspicious as ever of a possible attack, kept aloof from
the fire, and lay down to sleep at a little distance outside the ring of
light. Stephens established himself on the windward side of the fire,
and set up the skin of the buck he had shot as a windbreak behind his
back against the chill night air of the sierra.
Tired as he was with his long day's walk on foot, he lay there, warming
first one side and then the other, and replenishing the fire at
intervals, while he listened to the well-known sounds that from time to
time broke the silence of the hours of watch--the sough of the night
wind in the pines, like waves beating upon a far-off shore; the strange,
nocturnal love-call of an unseen bird; the long-drawn, melancholy howl
of a night-wandering wolf, seeking his meat abroad; and once his ears
thrilled at the agonising death-cry of a creature that felt the sudden
grip of the remorseless fangs of the beast of prey.
"Beasts of prey," he mused, "yes, that's just what we humans are too,
the most of us, and we take our turn to be victims. Killers and killed.
Well, if anybody's to blame for it, I suppose it's the nature of man."
Going back in his mind over the events of the day, he recalled the
fierce desire to shed blood that had possessed him when he left the
cacique and his fellows and set out to handle these Navajos alone. It
seemed as if that much-angered man with the tense-strung nerves was some
other than he. Now, peace was made, the captive was safe; and as he
looked at the girl sleeping there unharmed, dreaming, it might well be,
of her safe return home on the morrow, he felt a sort of mechanical
wonder at the rage that had then filled his heart. He thought, too, of
the shots that had been fired at him by the Navajo,--he had not cared to
inquire which one it was,--and in imagination he felt the hot lead
splash on his cheek again. He had been mighty near the jumping-off place
that time, sure. And yet it had been all about nothing, so to speak. It
had been a sort of mistake. He had wanted peace, really, and so had
they; yet how near they had come to turning that little oasis into a
slaughter-house. Fate was a queer thing. He looked up at the velvet
black of the sky overhead and the endless procession of the stars. The
moon had gone, but Jupiter still blazed in the western heavens. What did
it all mean, and what was one put here for, anyway? He confessed to
himself that he did not know; that he had no theory of life; he lived
from day to day, doing the work that lay next him, and doing it with his
might; but in the watches of the night he brooded now--not for the first
time--over the old problem, "Was life worth living, and if so, why?" To
that question he was not sure that he had any answer to give. Perhaps
the secret might lie in caring for somebody very much, and at present he
cared for nobody--very much--so far as he knew. Suppose that Navajo
bullet had found its billet in his brain, thus it seemed to him in these
morbid imaginings of the weary night watch, he would be sleeping now the
last sleep of all, like that other victim in the cañon over yonder; and
what was there in that that he should mind it? Perhaps it would have
been better so--perhaps, yes, perhaps.