A PREHISTORIC HEARTH
When Stephens took his way through the moonlight, carrying the spade
before him on the saddle, his heart was lighter than it had been for
days. He was so used to living alone that this novel experience of being
constantly in the company of others, night and day, without
interruption, ever since the hour when he had rescued Josefa from the
cacique, had tired him out. Also he disliked the sense of having others
dependent on him, and during the whole of that time he had been burdened
with responsibility, first for Josefa and then for the Mexican girl. At
last, thank goodness, that was all over and done with. Josefa was secure
in Reyna's keeping, and Manuelita was safe at home, while Mahletonkwa
had been paid his money and dismissed; now John Stephens was his own man
again, and not bound to see after other people's affairs any longer. He
could go about his proper business by himself in his own independent
way, and that was precisely what he liked better than anything else in
the world. As for this matter of finding and burying the dead man's
bones, it was one for which he was answerable to nobody but himself. Of
his own free will and pleasure he had decided that it should be done,
and, accordingly, here he was doing it. And what a useful pretext it
had supplied him with for getting away from the fuss and flummery at San
Remo. When he thought of those two stout, elderly dames falling upon him
like a pair of animated feather-beds, and giving him their blessing, he
felt weak; what a mercy he had this excuse of the burial to help him
escape from it all! And then his mind reverted to Manuelita sitting
there in the midst of the fuss, her eyes bright as ever in spite of
fatigue and of the tears of joy she had shed at getting home, her cheeks
pink with excitement, and her lively tongue going sixteen to the dozen.
Was he, after all, so particularly glad to be off by himself once more?
He hated a mob of people on principle, but was he so particularly glad
to get away from her? Well, come to think of it, in a manner he was, and
yet, again, he wasn't. Looking at it in one way, he wouldn't care much
to be planted down there again in that crowded room with those cousins
and aunts all round her, but suppose, now, that he had her once again
with him up here in the sierra, alone together the two of them. He
thought of how they had watched over one another, turn about, in the
camp, and how she had mocked at his simple cookery, and the fun they had
really had with one another. What a good time it had been; and yet when
he was having it, so it seemed to him now, he had not been aware of the
fact. Perhaps he had been too anxious about her then to realise it, but
it was God's truth all the same, and they had had a good time. What was
more, he knew it now and no mistake, and he wondered how it had come
about that it was so good. By George! but he did wish he had her along
right here and now, she riding on the horse, with him running alongside
just as he had done that afternoon. She was good to talk to, and no
mistake, and when he pointed things out to her and told her about them,
everything seemed to have an unwonted zest which was lacking now in her
absence, although he was riding over the very same ground he had
traversed with her only a few hours ago. Every turn in the trail
recalled to his mind something he had said to her or she had said to
him. And how they had laughed, to be sure! He sighed at the recollection
without having the least idea that he sighed, but he did not shake off
the idea of how good it would be to have her with him. Strange to say he
began to discover that he did not seem to quite care for his own company
as he used to do. Unconsciously he lost himself in a reverie, until his
horse stumbled over a stone, and he jerked the rein and struck him
indignantly with the spur.
And all the time Felipe, with the revolver in his belt, was tracking him
like a sleuth-hound.
Stephens reached the camp where they had passed the night in the little
park, and the recollection of it all came back vividly; he remembered
how startled he had been when she woke him, and he had sprung up with
his rifle cocked, ready to shoot; he remembered his surprise and
pleasure at seeing how neat and trim she had made herself while he
slept, in spite of all the rough and discomposing experiences her
involuntary journey had involved. "Grit! Yes, by George! she had lots of
it, sure; and endurance too. She was just about as brave as they make
'em."
Through the little park he passed, and out of it again on the other
side. Now he must begin to think about his destination; somewhere along
here he meant to turn off to the left in order to cut in upon the head
of that little cañon where he had killed the deer. That would save
quite a lot of travelling. There was a good moon, and there was no need
to retrace the whole trail back to the exact spot where he had fired the
shot. "If I only had Faro along now," he said, "he could take me to the
place where I killed the deer, blindfold, if I wanted him to." But Faro
was far away at Don Nepomuceno's; he was a little footsore after the
long journey he had made, so his master left him behind under the care
of Manuelita. After a time Stephens noticed a favourable place for
turning off among the pines, at what he judged would be about the right
distance to strike the cañon. He wheeled his horse sharp to the left,
and pushed steadily on over the carpet of pine-needles in the new
direction.
And Felipe, following ever like a sleuth-hound, here overran the track
just as did Backus half an hour later. But, unlike Backus, the acuter
Indian boy had not overrun it many minutes before his quick instincts
told him what he had done; he at once retraced his steps, and quickly
succeeded in finding the place where Stephens had wheeled so sharp. He
followed this new direction through the pines for a little way, but the
horse-tracks on the dry pine-needles were practically invisible at
night, and he soon became conscious that he had lost them, and that it
was doubtful whether he could succeed in recovering them again.
Nevertheless, with the tireless determination of his race, he
persevered, more like a hound than ever as he quested now to right and
now to left and now making a bold cast forward, in the hope that by a
lucky chance he might stumble upon them. He passed thus through the belt
of pine timber and out into the open park country beyond it. But casting
about for a lost trail at night is a slow business, and the moon was
already low in the west when his eye ranging around caught the light of
a fire against a distant cliff. "That must be he," cried the boy,
grasping the pistol with his left hand; "I'll get him now."
* * * * *
Stephens had a good eye for country; he had judged his distance
correctly, and he hit the head of the little cañon he was searching for
with singular accuracy. The country that he had here got into was
beautifully open and park-like, only with some rough, rocky ridges
intersecting it here and there, and he searched around freely and
easily, keeping the moon on his left hand. Through the mountain glades
he wandered, in the bright, mysterious light which seems so clear and
yet which shows nothing as it really is.
"Rather a fool trick of mine, this night-work," said he, as his eyes
hunted in vain for any sign of what he had come to seek. "I reckon
likely I'll have to camp till morning, and then, maybe, if his bones are
lying anywhere round here, I'll manage to find them." He drew rein
irresolutely on the margin of a park-like expanse of undulating meadow
larger than any he had seen yet.
"Hullo! what's that under the Lone Pine in the middle of the meadow?" A
magnificent solitary pine-tree stood there in the moonlight, towering
aloft, and at its foot a dark, square object appeared.
"Why, it looks like a house in this light," he said; "but it can't
hardly be one neither." He turned his horse's head towards it and rode
nearer. "It's a house, by George! A house up here! No, I'm blessed if it
is. It is only a rock, but it's mighty like one all the same. Hullo!
here's a queer thing lying close to the foot of it; looks like an old
carcass of some sort or other. By George! but it's a dead horse." He
reined up and the animal he bestrode snorted at the strange object. It
was the dried shell of a horse, so to speak; the wolves and the
eagle-hawks had taken the flesh and the inside portions, but the
skeleton had remained intact, and so, too, had the hide. In that pure,
dry air the skin, instead of decaying, had become hard and stiff, and
clung to the ribs and bony framework still. He could see now that his
mistake in taking the rock for a house was a very pardonable one in that
deceptive light, for it was much the size of an ordinary adobe cottage,
and it rose square and abrupt from the level, grassy ground. He threw
his head back, and his eyes sought the top of the noble pine whose
towering head seemed to strike against the stars.
"Well, that's the finest tree I ever saw outside of California," said
the prospector.
He undid the lariat and dismounted, spade in hand.
"Dead horses aint exactly common objects hereabouts," said he. "If this
one owned such a thing as a boss when he was alive, perhaps his boss
might be lying hereabouts, too."
It was a shrewd guess, and as he stepped round the corner of the rock it
was instantly verified. The body of the man lay there, stiff and dried
like that of his beast. The clothing seemed to have partly protected the
trunk and limbs from the birds of prey, but the white skull shone bare
and ghastly. The long boots proclaimed him an American.
"Here's my man, sure enough," said Stephens, as he leaned on the spade
and looked down at the remains. "Think of him getting rubbed out like
this all alone up here in the mountains. No one's ever been near him
since, I guess. I wonder who he was?"
He went back to the dead horse and looked over it once more. There were
iron shoes on the forehoofs. "That's another proof, if one were wanted,
of his owner being an American," he said. "Perhaps I could find his
brand." He struck a match and held it close to the animal's quarter, but
the skin there had been rent and frayed by the wild things that had
devoured the meat, and he could not distinguish it.
"Saddle's gone, I see," he added, "and bridle and saddle blanket, and
hobbles, if he had them round his neck, and every mortal thing. It's a
wonder they left the horseshoes. These accursed Navajos haven't any
scruple about stripping a dead horse. It's only a dead man that they're
so scared about touching."
He went back to the corpse and looked at it a second time. "Gun's gone,"
he said, "but that's of course. And they didn't need to touch him when
he was dead to get it, for, according to the way Mahletonkwa told it,
they got his gun from him when he was alive. Pistol's gone, too, I see.
Likely they got that off him living, before they shot him with his own
gun. They couldn't take the clothes off him till he was dead, and so
they preferred to leave them on him. Wish I knew who he was." He cast
his eyes around. "Here's where he stood 'em off," he went on, looking at
a tiny, stone-built enclosure, barely big enough to hold three people at
once, that nestled against one side of the high rock, where it overhung.
"That's the place he chose, sure. That's one of those cubby-holes those
old cliff-dwellers used to put up under the rocks all about the country;
I guess they used them to shelter in when they were out on guard. It
wasn't a bad notion of this poor chap to get in there, but those
infernal Navajos got away with him all the same--cunning devils that
they are! Well, I might as well dig his grave right here."
He passed his horse's lariat round the enormous bole of the great Lone
Pine and made him fast. Then choosing a place between the mighty roots,
that anchored it like cables to the ground, he set to work with a will,
and soon had the narrow last resting-place sunk in the soft black earth.
He threw down the spade, and went to lift the light burden of the
remains. "Perhaps I'd better look in his pockets first and see if
there's anything to identify him by," he said. The weather-worn clothes,
threadbare from summer rains and winter snows, lay light over the hollow
breast, as he felt in the pocket and drew out a small book. He opened
it; it was weather-stained, but not rotten. The moonlight was so bright
he could almost have read the writing by it, but he struck a match to
make sure. A name was inscribed on the first page. "Holly K. Fearmaker,
1869." There was no address. "Never heard of him before. I wonder where
he was from?" He tried the other pockets; there was nothing save some
bits of string. "If he owned a purse I reckon some Navajo scoundrel has
got it now," said Stephens. "There's nothing, I don't believe, that
Mahletonkwa would stick at for cash."
He lifted the remains tenderly, and placed them in the grave, gathering
up all that he could find; then he shovelled the rich black mould of the
mountain meadow on them, and heaped a little mound, and replaced the
grassy sods on top. He leaned on the spade and looked down at his
handiwork.
"What was it I seem to remember it saying, in the book that young
Englishman had along in the San Juan district last summer, and loaned me
to copy a piece out of? There was a verse that I liked, about the body
of a man being like a tent. Yes, I've got it now--
"'T is but a tent where takes his one day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrásh
Strikes--and prepares it for another guest.'
This grass will send its roots down to where you lie, pard; and it'll
grow stronger as your bones grow rotten; and then the blacktail deer and
the elk will graze over your head and fatten on the grass; and then,
maybe I myself, or maybe some other lone prospector just like you or me,
will happen along and shoot the elk or the deer, and the wheel comes
full circle. Well, so long, old man, and sleep sound."
He went to the tree and unfastened the lariat from the hole. Then he
stooped to pick up the spade which lay beside the new-made mound. As he
did so his eye was caught by a little fragment of rock that lay by it,
which had been thrown out in sinking the grave. Mechanically he picked
it up, and its weight at once revealed to his practised experience that
it was a mineral of some kind. He slipped it into his pocket and led his
horse over to the big rock. "It does look rather like an outcrop," he
said, as he carelessly knocked off a few small specimens with the angle
of the spade. He had done this so many hundred times before, that he
pocketed them almost without interest, as a matter of habit, and set off
in the direction of the trail. Before very long he came to a stop.
The meadow was bounded by a low cliff, which, farther down, became the
wall of the cañon where he had killed the deer. It was not more than
about twenty or thirty feet high, but it was perpendicular, in places
even overhanging, and blocked his way absolutely. He turned to the right
along it in order to find where he might cross it. The cliff faced south
and west, and the bright light of the moon made every detail distinct.
Before he had gone far the opening of another little cubby-hole showed
dark on a ledge of the moonlit cliff, which was overhung by the
projecting brow above. Then there came half a dozen of them close
together. Then the ledge broadened and ran inwards in a softer stratum
of the cliff face, so that a whole row of little houses were built along
it. The ledge was ten or twelve feet up the cliff face, so that the
houses could only have been approached by ladders, while the overhanging
cliff brow afforded them absolute protection from above.
"By George!" he said, "this must be the old pueblo I've heard of as
being up here in the mountain; they say the Aztecs used to live here
before the days of Montezuma."
The ledge ceased presently, and here there were rooms absolutely carved
out of the living rock itself. Nor were these aloft in air like the
former ones; it seemed as if the people who had evolved the idea of
building their houses like swallows' nests under the eaves, for
security, had gained confidence and come boldly down to the level of the
ground. He looked into one, and struck a match; it was just a little
square room with a doorway, all cut out of solid rock. The floor was
bare rock too. "Lots of cheap labour going when they made houses like
that," he said. "There must have been a whole heap of folks living here
once."
Farther on there were the remains of stone houses built on the ground,
close to, or against, the cliff face. "Thick as bees they must have
been," he said; "I'd no sort of idea there had been such a vast number
of them. It must have been a regular swarmery of Indians."
He went on half a mile or more, and the buildings were continuous either
on the ground or upon the ledge, which ran right along. They were almost
all square or oblong in plan, but here and there at intervals appeared
one that was round and of a sort of beehive form. These were old
estufas. "I've a good mind to camp here," he said, "and see what this
place looks like by daylight. I never had the least notion there was so
much of it. Some of those scientific chaps at the Smithsonian ought to
be told about this. I bet it's the oldest thing in the United States."
He stopped before one of the ancient cave-dwellings. It was not one of
those excavated entirely out of the rock, for here there was a natural
cave on the ground level. Across the front of this a wall had been
built, enclosing the space behind it as a dwelling-room, but the wall
had been partly broken down by time. In the angle where the wall joined
the rock there was a fireplace. Close by, an external house had been
built as a sort of lean-to against the rock face, with a roof supported
by beams that had now fallen in.
"I guess I'll just move in and take possession," he said as he looked at
the cave-dwelling, and, suiting the action to the word, he stripped the
saddle from his horse and put it inside, and then led him out in the
meadow to picket him.
He returned to where he had left his saddle; he could see by the
moonlight the fallen roof-beams of the outside house lying confusedly
here and there. The roof had been of clay, but this had all washed down
and now was indistinguishable from the floor, while the layers of
brushwood that had supported it had crumbled into dust. But the primeval
rafters of enduring pitch-pine were still mostly sound.
Entering the cave-dwelling, where he had put his saddle, his eye was
caught by the old fireplace; it was still blackened with the flame of
the fire that had so long ago been quenched, and still there lay visible
on the hearth, cold and black, the dead embers that had once been live
and glowing coals of fire.
"I wonder how many centuries it is since those were live coals?" he
said. "I've heard say the old, old Aztecs used to live up north here in
these deserted mountain pueblos and cliff-dwellings before ever they
went south and built the City of Mexico. And they'd been living down
there, so I've heard, for ages and ages before Cortes came along and
slaughtered Montezuma. Why, it might be a thousand years since this
place was inhabited."
He looked at the dead embers with a fascinated gaze. To him, who
considered a mining camp of two years' duration quite old, who was
himself one of the restless spirits who were busy making history, the
history of the New West, the prehistoric hearth came with a strange
appeal.
"I'll rekindle it," he said; "I will so; I'd like to warm my hands at a
fire that's a thousand years old maybe. Those old rafters out there will
do well to burn." He stepped round to the ruined house. "I wonder if
there's any snakes hiding among those fallen stones?" He struck a match
once more, and looked round in likely corners and crevices, but no sign
of any reptile appeared; he dragged out a couple of rafters and carried
them in and placed their ends in the fireplace; he broke with a heavy
stone another one that had partly rotted, and got some splinters out of
the sounder part and soon had a fire going. He watched the dead embers
catch and glow red from the blaze.
"Who'd have thought in all those hundreds of years," he said, "as they
lay dead, that they'd ever jump to life again in one moment like this."
His words pointed to the glowing coals, but he was thinking of the poor
shell of a body that an hour before he had committed to the ground. Who
could believe that it might ever live again? and yet--some folks said
so.
The fate of that lonely man had moved him deeply, more deeply by far
than he was conscious of, for it was the type of what his own was like
to be, to fall unfriended and alone in some remote ravine of a nameless
range. He thought of the pocket-book he had rescued, and drew it out.
The fire blazed brightly now, and he could read by it easily. The notes
were casual jottings--entries of cash expended--notes of an arrangement
with another man to meet and mine together--the brand of a horse
purchased, and the price set down, eighty-five dollars--Winchester
cartridges, two and a half dollars.
"That's clear enough evidence that he had a Winchester," commented
Stephens; "all right, then; practically that settles it. He's the man,
sure, those cursed Navajos joked about killing with his own gun. Hullo!
what's this? Mahletonkwa's name, as I'm alive!" He rapidly ran his eye
over a page of close writing. "Why, he's got it all down that
Mahletonkwa brought him up here to show him a silver mine, and then
treacherously left him, and that then he was attacked by Indians; he
doesn't say what Indians, poor beggar; but you bet I know who they
were. Here's his last entry. 'I've stood them off now for six hours,
and if they don't get me before night, maybe I'll make the riffle and
get away.' It was after he'd written that that they wounded him and he
surrendered to them, and they had their little game with him, the sons
of guns! But that's their way; cruelty and cunning are bred in their
bones. They've been doing things like that for a good deal more than a
thousand years, I guess, and they've kind of got into the habit of it.
But I'd like to pay them out all the same. It's that Mahletonkwa's band
are the guilty ones, and I dare swear to it. Well, we'll see. I've given
them no amnesty for this. We'll see."
He sat there, quite still, in a fierce and moody silence. He was so
still that a rattlesnake in the stones behind him pushed his flat,
venomous head out of a crevice, and looked at him for quite a long time,
and then drew it in again and retired. "Leave me alone and I'll leave
you alone," was the snake's motto. He had no wrongs to avenge.
Unconscious of this silent observer of his reverie, the American allowed
himself to indulge for a while in wild, fanciful dreams of revenge for
the murder of his fellow-countryman; then he pulled himself up short.
"I'm not really called upon to punish them," he said, "and I won't think
about it. It only makes me angry, and I hate to be angry and do
nothing." He raised himself up, moved the ends of the burning rafters
farther into the fireplace, and the flames blazed up freshly.
"Kit Carson used to be mighty careful about looking into the camp-fire
at night," he said. "He always used to sit well away from the blaze,
with his eyes towards the darkness, so that if anything happened he
could see with them at once, without having to wait till they had got
accustomed to it. But then there was always war going on, and always
danger, when he used to be around in this part of the country. I've
never felt shy about sitting by a camp-fire up in this sierra, and there
aint no reason that I know of why I should."
He rose and straightened himself up to his full height, and stretched
out his arms as a relief after sitting so still. "I might as well take a
look round, though," he said, "and see if that horse is all right. I
don't know his tricks, and he might tangle himself up in his
picket-rope." He strolled out to where he had fastened him, and made
sure that he was all right. As he turned to come back again, he saw
something on the ground that caught the fire-light and shone like a
jewel. He stooped to pick it up. It was an obsidian arrowhead.
"Volcanic glass," said the miner,--expert as he was in
minerals,--critically turning it over and over in his fingers, "and most
beautifully chipped. This is a piece of real high-class ancient Indian
work. Now, I wonder if that arrow belonged to one of those old Aztec
pueblo folks, or if it was one shot at them by some wild Indian. The
wild Indians were enemies of the house-people then, same as now."
His imagination took fire as he looked at this relic of ancient strife.
The long procession of the centuries unrolled itself before his mind's
eye, and he beheld the secular struggle for life of tribe against tribe.
Those old pueblo builders, cultivators of corn, house-folk, had always
been at odds with their nomad brethren, the hunters of the wild wood and
the plains; yet generation after generation, they had gone on being
born, growing up, marrying, and begetting a new generation to succeed
them, and passing away either in battle for their little community or
peacefully by their own hearth. This fire-blackened, clay-plastered
angle of the wall, to what unending succession of house-mothers and
house-fathers did it not speak? He looked at it with a sort of
reverence. The flickering light of the flames, rekindled by him, alien
successor as he was of those ancient folk, lit up every detail of the
surface. In places the clay daubed on there so many centuries ago looked
as fresh as if it had been done last year. Here and there he could see
the very finger-marks of the woman who had plastered it; for among the
Indians this was ever the task of the women, as he knew very well. Yes,
and, by George! there in one spot, low down, was the handprint of a tiny
child in the plaster; the little one had been playing beside its mother,
and had stuck its hand against the wall while the clay was wet. A
strange emotion struck through him at the sight. It was as if the little
hand had reached out to him across the years and touched his own. The
fire he had kindled on this cold hearth seemed like a sort of altar
flame, in memory of the love that had once made this little abode a
sacred place.
Like a flash it came across his mind that this was what he had blindly
sacrificed during all these long years of his wanderings--the joys of
home; the sweet domesticities of wife and child. He knew them not;
aloof, solitary, self-contained, he had coldly held himself outside the
circle of all that was best in life. Why? To what end? For the sake of
phantom gold; for the sake of a visionary fortune which he might never
touch; for the sake of being able to build, some distant day, a fancied
home away back there in the States. It was all a dream. Ten of the best
years of his life had gone in the vain effort. Ten more might go as
easily and as futilely. And then! OLD AGE! He saw it all now; and now it
was no imaginary shadow-wife--dim, vague, and unsubstantial--that his
heart went out to; it was she, the real, living, breathing creature of
flesh and blood that he had played with and talked to; that he had
rescued in her trouble, and restored to her parents; she whose sweet
eyes met his with a certain demand. With a rush it came over him that
she was what he needed; that he wanted to make her happy, and that he
must do it by making her his own. He was amazed at his own blindness and
hardness of heart. Was he too late? Could he have missed his chance? No,
no; not that! But he would lose no time. He knew now what he must say to
her, and the quicker he did it the better. With a joyful sense of
anticipation he saw himself already at her side, pouring into her ear
the tale of his loneliness and his love. He sprang to his feet at the
thought, eager to start. As he rose to his full height there was a
deafening bang close to his right ear, a blinding flash, and the burning
breath of gunpowder scorched his cheek. Some murderer had fired at him
from a yard off!