THE PROSPECTOR’S STORY
“No, sir, take it anyway you like, it jest naterally looks bad; an’
that’s all me an’ my pardner knows about it.”
“It was about sixteen year ago,” Thad began at last.
“Seventeen, the middle of next month,” said Bob.
Thad continued:
“Me an’ my pardner here was comin’ in to Tucson from the Santa Rosa
Mountains, which is down close to the Mexican line. We’d been out for
about three months an’ was needin’ supplies. ’Long late in the afternoon
of the second day from where we’d been workin’, we stopped at a little
ranch house about three mile this side of the line for water. We knowed
the old Mexican man an’ woman what lived there all right--’most
everybody did--everybody like us old desert rats, that is--an’ didn’t
nobody know any good of ’em either.”
“Some claim that the old woman was Sonora Jack’s mother,” said Bob.
“Sonora Jack, you know, is half Mex, and a mighty bad citizen, too. He’s
somewheres across the line right now, hidin’ out for a killin’ he an’
his crowd made in a holdup’ bout the same time that we’re tellin’ you
of.”
Thad took up the story.
“Well, sir, we’d filled our water bags an’ was standin’ talkin’ with the
old woman who’d come to watch us--the man, he was away it appeared--when
all at once a little boy come trottin’ ’round the corner of the cabin
from behind somewheres.”
“About three or four, he was,” said Bob.
“About that,” agreed Thad. “An’ when he seen us he jest stopped short,
kind of scared like, an’ stood there cryin’.
“Well, sir, me an’ Bob tumbled in a holy minute that he didn’t belong
there. We knowed them old Mexicans didn’t have no kid that wasn’t growed
up long ago. An’ this little chap didn’t look like a Mexican youngster
nohow. The old woman acted kind of rattled at us lookin’ at the kid so
sharp, an’ started in tellin’ us that the muchachito was one of her
grandsons. That sounded fair enough at first, but when she turned an’
yelled at the kid in Mex, givin’ him the devil for not stayin’ behind
the house like she’d told him to, we seed that somethin’ was wrong. He
didn’t savvy Mex no more than we do Chinee.
“While the poor little cuss was standin’ there scared stiff an’
cryin’--not knowin’ what the old woman wanted, Bob here went down on one
knee an’ held out his hands invitin’ like. ‘Come here, sonny,’ says he
to the kid in English, ‘come on over here an’ let’s have a look at you.’
“Well, sir, that youngster gave a funny little laugh, right out through
his tears, an’ come runnin’.
“The old woman didn’t know what to do; but I was keepin’ one eye on her
so she didn’t dare try to start anything much.
“Bob, he asked the youngster, ‘What’s your name, sonny?’ an’ the little
feller answered back, bright as a dollar: ‘My name’s Marta.’
“‘Marta?’ says Bob, lookin’ up at me puzzled like. ‘That’s a funny name
for a boy.’
“‘I ain’t no boy,’ said the kid, quick as a flash, ‘I’m a girl, I am.’”
“An’ by smoke! she was,” ejaculated Bob.
“Yes,” continued Thad, “an’ when the old woman seen that the little gal
was talkin’ to us--the old woman she didn’t savvy a word of anything but
Mex, but she could tell what was goin’ on--when she see it, she jest
naterally grabbed the youngster an’ yanked her into the house an’ shut
the door.
“Me an’ Bob made camp not far away that night, an’ after supper, an’ it
had got good an’ dark, we was settin’ by the fire talkin’ things over,
when all at once we heard the sound of a wagon an’ a child
screamin’--sort of choked like. You can believe we wasn’t long gettin’
to where the sound come from. Them Mexicans was lightin’ out with that
little gal for across the border.
“By that time, me and my pardner was so plumb sure that there was
somethin’ wrong that we didn’t waste no more strength in foolishness. We
jest proceeded to give that hombre the third degree ’til he ups an’
confesses that the baby was left with them by some white folks who was
on a huntin’ trip, an’ that they was only keepin’ the youngster ’til her
daddy an’ mammy come back for her.
“You can guess how quick me an’ Bob was to believe any such yarn as
that; so we figured the safest thing to do was to take the baby
ourselves into Tucson; which we done.
“Well, sir, by the time we struck town the little gal had made such a
hit with us both that we couldn’t near think of givin’ her up.”
“Darndest affectionate kid that ever was,” put in Bob. “Started right
off first thing lovin’ us two old rapscallions like we’d always belonged
to her, an’ callin’ us both ‘daddy.’”
“We sure done our best to find her real folks, though,” said Thad. “We
stayed in Tucson for more’n a month. But the authorities nor nobody
couldn’t get no hint nowhere about any kid bein’ lost, nor stole, nor
nothin’. Things was movin’ pretty fast in this country them days, an’
the sheriff always had his hands full; so it wasn’t long ’til everybody
got busy with some fresh excitement, an’ me an’ Bob was left with the
baby on our hands. There didn’t appear to be nothin’ else we could do,
so we jest decided that Providence, or good luck, or somethin’, had
fixed it so’s us two old mavericks was blessed with a offspring whether
we was regularly entitled to one or not. Then pretty soon we moved on
over into the Graham Mountains, an’ jest naterally took her along.
“We both was lovin’ her so by now that we was about to fight to see
which one was to be her daddy, when we compromised by agreein’ to take
turn an’ turn about--week by week. An’ that’s how we come to give her
both our names--Hillgrove. Her first name is Martha, we suppose; but
Marta was the best she could ever tell us. An’ that’s about all there is
of it up to the time we fetched her here an’ you started in teachin’
her.”
“You see, ma’am,” said Bob, “this here is the way me an’ Thad has got it
figgered: The baby must have been left with them Mexicans where we found
her, ’cause she ain’t Mexican nor any part Mexican herself. Wal, what
kind of white folks do you reckon would go away an’ leave a little gal
like that, with such an outfit? They couldn’t a-left her accidental
like, ’cause if they had they’d a-come back for her, an’ then they’d
been huntin’ us. With all the fuss we made about it in Tucson, somebody
would a-knowed somethin’ about her sure, if her people hadn’t wanted to
get shet of her on account of them bein’ the sort they was. An’ there
ain’t been no time since then that me an’ Thad has been hard to find.
Don’t you see, her folks couldn’t a-been decent even if her father an’
mother was--was--I mean, even if she was borned all regular an’
right--which don’t look no way likely. Any way you take it, they must
a-been a bad sort to throw away a baby like her.”
“You can bet they was,” added Thad mournfully, “for it’s a dead immortal
cinch that them old Mexicans couldn’t a-come by her no other way;
’cause they never went anywhere an’ if they had stole her it sure would
a-raised enough interest in the country for somebody to a-heard about
it. No, sir, take it any way you like, it jest naterally looks bad.
An’,” the old prospector finished with an air of relief, “that’s all me
an’ my pardner knows about it.”
Saint Jimmy did not speak. He was evidently deeply moved by the strange
story. Mrs. Burton was drying her eyes. The Pardners waited, with no
little anxiety.
At last Bob asked timidly:
“Be you still thinkin’, sir, as how our gal ought to be told?”
Reluctantly, Saint Jimmy answered:
“I am afraid that Marta must know.”
He looked at his mother.
“I am sure she must know,” said Mrs. Burton with quiet decision. “And
you, my son, are the one to tell her. It will come to her easier from
you, her teacher, than from any one else.”
“Yes, ma’am,” cried Thad eagerly. “That’s the way me an’ Bob figgered
it.”
“Will you do it, sir?” asked Bob.
“Yes,” said Saint Jimmy, “I will tell her.”
The Pardners sighed with relief.
“That sure lets us out of a mighty bad hole,” said Thad. “It’ll be a
heap easier on our gal, too.”
“It sure will,” echoed Bob. “Ain’t nobody can tell what kind of a
God-awful mess us old fools would a-made of it. We’re almighty grateful
to you, sir, for helpin’ us out.”
“We are that,” came from Thad with pathetic earnestness.
Bob said hurriedly:
“An’ now that it’s all settled, Pardner, I move that me an’ you pulls
out of here before our gal happens along. I wouldn’t be ketched by her
right now for all the money we’re goin’ to have when we strike that big
vein we’re tunnelin’ for.”
“Which ain’t so much as it might be at that,” retorted Thad.
“You can’t never tell,” returned Bob with his usual cheery optimism,
“gold is where you find it.”
When Bob and Thad were gone, Saint Jimmy and his mother, discussing the
matter, were forced to agree with the Pardners. It certainly did look
bad. In fact it looked so bad that Saint Jimmy was not at all happy
under the burden of the responsibility which the old prospectors had
shifted from their own shoulders to his. He foresaw that it would not be
easy to tell this young woman whom he had educated, and whose fine,
sensitive pride he knew so well, this story that he had just heard from
her two foster fathers.
When Marta stopped at the Burtons’ on her way home from Oracle, later in
the day, neither Saint Jimmy nor his mother mentioned the Pardners’
visit, and there seemed to be no opportunity for the girl’s teacher to
tell her the story he was so sure she should know. Some other time, he
told himself, it would be easier, perhaps.
* * * * *
While the Pardners’ daughter was riding home from the Burtons’ that
afternoon, and the Pardners were at work in their little mine, Natachee
the Indian stood on a point of rock, high on the mountain side--so high
that he could look beyond the Cañon of Gold and afar off, over the brown
desert that, from the foothills of the Catalinas, stretches away, weary
mile after weary mile, until, in the shadowy blue distance, it is lost
in the sky.
To those of us who are accustomed to the present-day Indian in his white
man’s garb, doing the white man’s work on the white man’s roads and
ranches, Natachee would have aroused peculiar, not to say amusing,
interest. From the single feather in the headband which bound his long,
raven-black hair to his beaded moccasins, he was dressed in the
picturesque costume of his savage fathers. Save for a broad hunting
knife, he was armed only with the primitive bow and arrows. He was in
the best years of his manhood and his face and bearing would have graced
the hero of a Fenimore Cooper Indian tale.
But however much he seemed out of step with the times, that lone figure,
standing sentinel-like on the rocky point, fitted his wild surroundings.
So, indeed, might one of his ancestors have stood to watch the strange
new human life when it first began to move along those trails that,
until then, had known only the sandaled and moccasined feet of
prehistoric peoples.
An hour passed. The Indian held his place as motionless as the rock
against which he leaned, while his somber gaze ranged over those mighty
reaches of desert and mountain and sky. High over Rice Peak a golden
eagle wheeled on guard before the nest of his royal mate. But Natachee
seemed not to see. From a dead oak on Samaniego Ridge a red-tailed hawk
screamed his shrill challenge. The Indian apparently did not hear. A
company of buzzards circled above a dark object in the wash below the
Wheeler Ranch corrals. Natachee gave no heed. A ground squirrel leaped
to a near-by rock to sit bolt upright with bright eyes fixed upon the
red man, the while he sounded a chirping note of inquiry. But the
Indian’s gaze remained steadfastly fixed on that distant landscape where
he could see a cloud of dust that was raised by a swiftly moving
automobile on the Oracle road. On the Bankhead Highway there were two
similar clouds. In the purple haze beyond the point of the Tortollita
Mountains, a streamer of smoke marked the position of a Southern Pacific
Overland train that was approaching Tucson from the western coast. The
face of the red watchman on the mountain side was set stern and grim. In
his somber eyes there was a gleam of savage meaning.
The sun was just touching the tops of the Tucson hills when the Indian
started and leaned forward with suddenly quickened interest.
No ordinary power of human vision would have noticed that black speck in
the vast stretch of country, much less could the ordinary observer have
said exactly what it was that had attracted the Indian’s attention. But
Natachee saw that the tiny dot, moving so slowly on the old road into
the Cañada del Oro, was a man. His interest was excited to an unusual
degree because the man was walking, unaccompanied even by a pack burro.
And now the evening wind from the desert, fragrant with the smell of
greasewood, mesquite and cat-claw, swept along the mountain side. The
Tucson hills were massed dark blue with their outlines sharply cut
against the colors of the sunset. Natachee, watching, saw that lone
figure on the trail below enter the Cañon of Gold and lose itself in the
gathering dusk.
As the shadows thickened, the night prowlers on padded feet crept from
their dark retreats into the gloom. Owls and bats on silent wings swept
by. Old ghosts of the dead past stirred again on the old desert and
mountain ways. In the deeper dusk that now filled the cañon, voices
awoke--strange, murmuring, whispering, phantom voices that seemed to
come from an innumerable company of dreary, hopeless souls. The light
went out of the western sky. Details of plant and rock and bush were
lost. Weird and wild, like a mysterious spirit brooding over the scene,
the dark figure of the Indian on the rocky point above the Cañon of Gold
was silhouetted against the starlit sky.
In the little white house on the mountain side, Saint Jimmy was thinking
of the strange story that the Pardners had told.
* * * * *
In their home beside the cañon creek, the old prospectors and their
partnership daughter were sleeping, with no dreams of the strange
leading of the tangled threads of lives to the Cañon of Gold.
Far away to the south, in old Mexico, two men sat in a cantina. Between
them, on a table, with glasses and a bottle of mescal, lay a crudely
drawn map. As they talked together in low tones, they referred often to
the rude sketch which bore in poorly written words “La mina con la
puerta de fierro en la Cañada del Oro”--The mine with the door of iron
in the Cañon of the Gold.