GHOSTS
“The Cañon of Gold is haunted by the ghosts of these disappointed
ones. I, Natachee, know these things because I am an Indian.”
Marta could not have explained, even to herself, why she was so anxious
to see Saint Jimmy and Hugh Edwards together. Certainly she made no
effort to find an explanation.
Through the years that he had been her teacher, Saint Jimmy had come to
personify, as it were, her spiritual or intellectual ideal.
Any why not, since it was Saint Jimmy who had helped her form her
spiritual and intellectual ideals? Their daily association, their
friendship, their love--for she did love Saint Jimmy--had all been
grounded and developed in an atmosphere of books and study that was
purely Platonic. In her teacher she had come to see embodied the
essential truths which he had taught. She had never for a moment thought
of Doctor Burton and herself as a man and a woman. He was simply Saint
Jimmy. She was his grateful pupil who loved him dearly because he was
Saint Jimmy.
But from the very first moment of their meeting Marta was conscious that
the appeal of Hugh Edwards’ personality was an appeal that to her was
new and strange--she was conscious that he had made an impression upon
her such as no man had ever before made. For that matter, she had never
before met such a man. As she had said so many times, he made her think
of Saint Jimmy and yet he was different. And because the experience was
so foreign to anything that she had ever known, she did not understand.
Because Hugh Edwards made her think so often of Saint Jimmy, and because
he was so different from Saint Jimmy, she was anxious to see the two men
together. Nor could the girl understand her teacher’s persistent failure
to call on their new neighbor. It was not at all like Saint Jimmy.
Nothing, perhaps, revealed quite so fully Marta’s lack of experience in
such things as her failure to understand why Saint Jimmy was so slow in
making the acquaintance of Hugh Edwards.
And now at last her wish to see these two men together was gratified.
The girl’s radiant face revealed her excitement. Her voice was jubilant,
her laughter rang out with delicious abandon. She was tingling with
animation and lively interest. Her two friends could no more resist the
impulse to laugh with her than one could refrain from smiling at the
glee of a winsome child.
As they shook hands she watched them, looking from one to the other with
an expression of such eager, anxious inquiry on her glowing countenance
that the men were just a little embarrassed.
“I really should have come to see you long ago,” said Saint Jimmy. “The
right sort of neighbors are not so plentiful in the Cañada del Oro that
we can afford to neglect them. I have heard so much about you, though,
that I feel as if you were really an old-timer whom I have known for
years.”
He looked smilingly at Marta.
Hugh Edwards did not appear at all displeased at the suggestion that the
girl had been talking about him.
“And I,” he returned with an equally significant glance at Marta, “have
heard so much about Doctor Burton that if there was ever a time when I
didn’t know him I have forgotten it.”
Marta was delighted. She could not mistake the fact that the two men, as
it sometimes happens, liked each other instantly. They seemed to know
and understand each other instinctively. The truth is that the men
themselves were just a little relieved to find this to be the fact.
Doctor Burton saw in Marta’s neighbor a man of more than ordinary
personality. That one of such character and education should choose to
live as Edwards was living, amid surroundings so foreign to the
environment in which he had so evidently been born and reared, and
should be content to occupy himself with such menial labor, was to Saint
Jimmy a puzzling thing. But Saint Jimmy was too broad in his
sympathies--too big in his understanding of life to be suspicious of
everything that puzzled him. It would, indeed, have been difficult for
any healthy-minded, clean-thinking person to be suspicious of Hugh
Edwards.
And Hugh Edwards recognized instantly in Marta’s teacher that quality
which led all men, except such poor characterless creatures as the
Lizard, to speak in his presence with instinctive gentleness and
deference.
When they were seated in the shade of the cabin and the two men, who
were to her so like and yet so unlike, were exchanging the usual small
talk with which all friendships, however close and enduring, commonly
begin, Marta watched and listened.
She was right, she thought proudly; they were alike, and yet they were
different. What was it? Too frank to dissemble, too untrained in such
things to deceive, too natural and innocent to hide her interest, she
compared, contrasted, analyzed. But while she was seeking an answer to
the thing that puzzled her, there was in her mind and heart not the
faintest shadow of a suggestion that she was choosing.
There was no occasion for choice. Indeed, she was not in reality
thinking--she was feeling.
And the men, while more apt in hiding their emotions, were scarcely less
conscious of the situation.
Suddenly Doctor Burton saw the girl’s face change. She was looking past
them as they sat facing her, toward the corner of the cabin. Her
expression of eager animation vanished and in its stead came a look of
almost fear. In the same instant, Jimmy was conscious that Edwards, too,
had noticed the girl’s change of countenance, and that a quick shadow
of dread and apprehension had fallen upon him. The two men turned
quickly.
Natachee was standing at the corner of the cabin.
For a long moment no one spoke. Then with a suggestion of a smile, as if
for some reason he was pleased with the situation, the Indian raised his
hand and uttered his customary word of greeting:
“How.”
They returned his salutation and he came forward to accept the chair
offered by Edwards. And though his dress, as usual, was that of a
primitive savage, his manner, at the moment, was in no way different
from the bearing of any white man with a background of educational and
social advantages. As he seated himself, he smiled again, as if finding
these three people together gave him a peculiar satisfaction.
Doctor Burton spoke with the easy familiarity of an old friend:
“Natachee, why on earth can’t you act more like a human being and less
like a disembodied spirit? You always come and go as silently as a
ghost.”
“I am as God made me,” the Indian returned lightly, then he added with
mocking deference to the three white people: “Except for a few
improvements added by your civilization. It is odd, is it not,” he
continued, “how the noble red man of your so highly civilized writers
and painters and uplifters of various sorts becomes so often an ignoble
vagabond once you have subjected him to those same civilizing
influences?”
“Certainly no one would accuse you of having acquired too much
civilization,” retorted Jimmy.
“I hope not, I am sure,” returned the Indian quietly. Then turning to
the others, he said graciously, “You will pardon us for this little
exchange of compliments. We are not really being rude to each other,
just friendly, that is all. With me, Saint Jimmy always drops his mask
of saintliness and becomes a savage, and I cease being a savage and
become, if not a saint, at least an imitator of the white man’s virtues.
It is the privilege of our friendship.”
“You are an old fraud,” declared Saint Jimmy.
“You flatter me,” returned Natachee. “My white teachers would be proud
of the honor you confer. They tried so hard, you know, to educate me.”
Edwards was amazed. He had never before heard Natachee talk in this
bantering vein. With him the Indian had always spoken gravely. He had
seldom smiled and had never laughed. The white man felt, too, that
underlying the playfulness of the Indian’s words and the seeming
pleasant humor of his mood, there was a savage interest--a cruel
certainty in the final outcome of some game in which he was taking a
grim part. He seemed to be playing as a cat plays with the victim of its
brutal and superior cunning.
While Edwards was thinking these things and watching the red man with
an odd feeling of dread which made him recall Marta’s saying that the
Indian always gave her the creeps, Natachee addressed the girl with
grave courtesy:
“It is really time that your teacher called upon your good neighbor,
isn’t it? I was beginning to fear that our Saint was harboring some
hidden grievance that provoked him to forget the social obligations of
his exalted position.”
Marta made no reply save a nervous laugh of embarrassment.
Doctor Burton flushed and said hurriedly:
“I was just asking Mr. Edwards, Natachee, when you materialized so
unexpectedly, how he liked living in the Cañada del Oro.”
“And I was about to reply,” said Edwards with enthusiasm, “that it is
the most beautiful, the most wonderfully satisfying place, I have ever
known.”
The Indian smiled, and his dark eyes glanced from Marta to Saint Jimmy,
as he said:
“Our cañon is being very good to Mr. Edwards, I think. It is giving him
health, gold enough for the necessities of life, and that peace which
passeth all understanding, with the possibility of acquiring great
wealth. It delights him with the beauty and the grandeur of nature. It
bestows upon him the blessings of a charming and delightful
companionship. And last, but not least, it affords him a sanctuary from
his enemies--if he has any. What more could any man ask of any place?”
Hugh Edwards moved uneasily.
The expression of Marta’s face was that of a wondering, half-frightened
child.
Saint Jimmy looked at the Indian intently, as if he, too, had caught the
feeling of a hidden, sinister meaning beneath the red man’s courteous
manner and half-jesting words.
“Natachee,” he said slowly, “I have often wondered--just what does the
Cañada del Oro mean to you?”
At the Doctor’s simple question or, perhaps, at the tone of his voice,
the countenance of the Indian suddenly became as cold and impassive as a
face of iron. Sitting there before them, clothed in the wild dress of
his savage ancestors, with his dark features framed in the jet-black
hair with that single drooping feather, he seemed, all at once, to have
thrown off every vestige of his contact with the schools of
civilization. When he had been speaking in the manner of a white man,
there had been something pathetic in his appearance. Only his native
dignity had saved him from being ridiculous. But now he was the living
spirit of the untamed deserts and mountains that on every side shut in
the Cañon of Gold. His dark eyes, filled with the brooding memories of a
vanishing race, turned slowly from face to face.
The three white people waited, with a strange feeling of uneasiness, for
him to speak.
“You say that I, Natachee, come and go as a ghost. Well, perhaps I am a
ghost. Why not? It would not be held beyond the belief of some of your
philosophers that the spirit of one who once, long ago, dwelt amid these
scenes, should return again in this body that you call me, Natachee the
Indian. The Cañada del Oro is peopled with ghosts. Those who, in the
years that are gone, lived here in the Cañon of Gold were as the
blossoms on the mountain sides in spring. In the summer months when
there was no rain, the blossoms disappeared. Then the rains came--the
‘Little Spring’ is here--and look, the flowers are everywhere.
“In this Cañon from the desert below to the pines above, there are holes
by the thousands where men have dug for gold. Climb the mountains and go
among the cliffs and crags and there are more and more of these holes
that were made by those who sought the yellow wealth. Walk the ridges
and make your way into the hidden ravines and gorges--everywhere you
will find them--these holes that men have dug in their search for
treasure. And every hole--every stroke of a pick--every shovel of
dirt--every pan of gravel--was a dream that did not come true; a hope
that was not fulfilled.
“The Cañon of Gold is haunted by the ghosts of these disappointed ones.
They are the shadows that move upon the mountain sides when the sun is
down and the timid stars creep forth in the lonely sky. They are the
lights that come and go in the cañon depths when the frightened moon
tries to hide in the pines of Mount Lemmon. They are the voices that we
hear in the nighttime, whispering, murmuring, moaning. Weary spirits
that cannot rest, troubled souls that find no peace--the disappointed
ones.
“And you who dare to dream and hope and labor here in the Cañon of Gold
to-day as those thousands who dared to dream and hope and labor here
before you--what are you but living ghosts among these restless spirits
of the dead? What are you to-day but shadows among the shades of
yesterday?
“You, Doctor Burton, are only a memory of dreams that did not come true.
You, Mr. Edwards, are but the ghost of the man you once planned to be.
You, Miss Hillgrove, are but the living embodiment of hopes that were
never fulfilled.
“As the shadow of an eagle passes, you came and you shall go. As the
trail of the eagle in the air so shall your dreams, your hopes and your
labor, be.
“I, Natachee, know these things. But because I am an Indian, I dream no
dreams--I have no hopes.” He arose and for a moment stood silent before
them. Then he said: “Natachee the Indian lives among the ghosts in the
Cañon of Gold.”
Before they could speak, he was gone; as silently as he had come he
disappeared around the corner of the cabin.
The two men and the girl sat as if under a spell and in the heart of
each there was a strange sadness and a shadow of fear.
* * * * *
As Doctor Burton made his way homeward, he wished more than ever that
he had told Marta the things that the Pardners had related to him.
Ever since that day when she had first talked to him of the stranger,
Saint Jimmy had watched carefully the girl’s growing interest in her new
neighbor. And, while Marta herself had been wholly unconscious of the
true meaning of those emotions which so disturbed her, her teacher had
understood that the womanhood of his child pupil was beginning to assert
itself. He was too wise not to know also that the time was approaching
when Marta herself would understand.
Through all her girlhood she had been no more conscious of herself than
were the wild creatures that she knew so much better than she knew her
own humankind. She had lived and accepted life without a thought of the
part that, as a woman, she would some day be called upon to play in it.
Because of this freedom from self, she had not been deeply concerned
about the beginnings of her life. But with the arousing of those
instincts that were to her so strange would come inevitably a tremendous
quickening of her interest in herself. This new and vital interest in
herself would as surely force her to inquire with determined and fearful
persistency into her past. Who was she? Who were her parents? Under what
circumstances was she born?
Doctor Burton knew the fine pride and the sensitive nature of his pupil
too well not to realize that, when the time did come for the girl to ask
these questions, her happiness might well depend upon the answers.
The Lizard’s loose-mouthed gossip had brought him suddenly face to face
with a situation which was to his mind filled with real danger to
Marta’s future. His meeting with Hugh Edwards, his quick observation of
the comradeship that had developed between Marta and her neighbor, the
uneasy forebodings aroused by the Indian’s words, all combined now to
make him resolve that, at any cost to himself, he no longer would put
off telling the girl what she ought to know. If Hugh Edwards were not
the type of man he was, or if Marta were not the kind of girl she was,
it would not, perhaps, make so much difference. To-morrow Marta was
going to Oracle. She would stop at the little white house on the
mountain side on her way home. Saint Jimmy promised himself that he
would surely tell her then.