HEART-WOOD
“Yes, you bet I testified,” recounted Hinray, who stood before a mirror
hung against a tree and combed his mustaches. “I seen it with my own
eyes. ’Twas all the better that the tree _was_ old. You can’t
counterfeit _old_ heart-wood. No! Nature ain’t to be duplicated.
“There she read, just as pretty: Silverstake claim, 70 feet east, and
south by 30 paces, and on—”
“But when is my father coming back?” Dawn persisted. “Now that the
Indian thing is straightened up why doesn’t he come back? I expected him
yesterday morning and again this morning. What’s that you have, Hinray?
Give it to me now. It’s mail.”
With exasperating deliberation Hinray was sorting out some very dirty
envelopes from one or two fairly clean ones. He handed her a heavy,
important-looking envelope.
“That’ll be from the Irrigation Service, I take it.”
“Yes, one might guess it from the letterhead,” Dawn replied witheringly.
Hinray appeared not to notice her sarcasm or to have further interest in
the letter.
“Oh!” Dawn exclaimed, too disappointed to hide her feelings. “It’s from
Garen, and he can’t get away till Thanksgiving. That’s six weeks! He
sends two paper clippings. Look, Hinray!” She cried excitedly and thrust
the paper before him. “It’s all about the Silverstake tree, and me
finding it. Read it.”
The evidence of the Reservation boundary recently located was
unmistakable, so the article said; the disputed boundary of the Indian
Reservation was now settled, for never had there been any doubt of the
validity of the original grant. With the discovery of the old blaze had
also come to light the exact location of an ancient silver working, long
since forgotten, but referred to in old records and remembered by the
Indians. There was still evidence of a long-abandoned shaft on the
Indian Reservation, and the vein extended along the mountain to the edge
of the Forest Reserve where there was a fault or slipping of the rock.
There had been only one claim filed on the faulted vein in the last
forty years, and that had been made ten years ago by Damon O’Neill,
forest ranger.
Dawn shouted with delight. “Read, read,” Hinray counseled, and she
continued. “The immediate workings in the shaft of the Pueblo mine, it
was said by the caciques of the Tesuque and Picuris pueblos, had been
exhausted, and there was a curse on the mine. One of their chiefs had
been killed there by an arrow from the Spirit of the Mountain. Others
among the young men thought that it was because the shaft was so
inaccessible that work in it had been abandoned. It was less trouble for
the Pueblo to get silver for jewelry by working for the white man.”
The article went on to say that the Pueblos, a simple agrarian people,
were more interested in their water rights and their crops than anything
else, and that now that the source of their rivers had been determined
and secured to them, they were satisfied. Through the white friends of
the Pueblos the use of their own water had been restored to them, so
that never again even in a time of drouth would they be made to suffer
for lack of water as they had been in the past ten to twenty years,
particularly this summer.
At the end of the article Dawn read the simple statement, “‘The finding
of the exact location of the old witness tree was made by Miss Dawn
O’Neill, daughter of the Forest Ranger, Damon O’Neill.’
“Dad’s probably getting his sample assayed,” Dawn said. “The claim is
his; he can sell it or work it himself if he wants to. Can’t he,
Hinray?”
“He can that,” Hinray agreed, “but I misdoubt iffen he’ll want to. If
you sell it and it proves to be worth the sellin’ or buyin’, that’ll
mean an awful mess in the best stand of timber left up there. It’ll mean
workin’s and noises of cranes and pulleys and ingines and dynamitin’.”
“But I thought, Hinray,” Dawn faltered, “that this kind of mining would
all be done underground. I thought a shaft and maybe a small engine
would be all they’d need.”
“And how would they get the ore out?” Hinray pursued relentlessly. “And
where would the miners live? They’d not want to climb up from McGuire’s
valley every morning and down every night. No, sirree. Ever go to a
silver mine? See them great steam shovels?”
“But, Hinray, don’t be a silly. Those are what they use at the great
ghino copper mines, where the ore runs only two per cent. to the ton and
is scooped by steam shovel. _This_ ore is rich, rich! And they’d pack it
down by burro to the railroad.”
“Mm-mm. Would they now? Do you think if Perry and that gang got
interested they’d stop at a _burro load_ of rich ore? Not them. They’d
have a railroad spur run right up into the mountains, that’s what. Look
at what they do just to get timber out. Build camps, stores, railroads.
They have to. Thing to do is work it yourselves. Little by little as you
can.”
Dawn was visibly depressed. “But Dad’s no miner, and I’m surely not. I
don’t want to work underground, Hinray, at the _roots_ of trees, or in
the heart of the mountain. We’re foresters, Hinray, the two of us.”
“Well,” Hinray concluded consolingly, “perhaps Perry and them’ll buy it
from yore father. Now they’ve been shet out of the Indian Reservation
range they’ve had to sell their cattle. But Gershwin took no loss. Not
he! Mark my words. ’Twas a fine set of cattle his herders drove down to
the stockyards to ship east. What profit Perry made he lost in the bank.
He brought nothin’ with him; he took nothin’ away.”
“And the James?” Dawn queried. “How did they come out? I never heard.”
“I reckon that poor fellow had to let his profit go, if he had any, to
cover his loan. But if he had any cash in hand I hope he kept holt of
it.” Hinray was a confirmed skeptic about the ways of the financial
world.
Dawn sat idly on the porch, her back against the wall, grateful for the
October sun. Shep lay with his head in her lap, and Piñon was grazing
near the cabin. The trees parted below them at the ford where the trail
turned up the Cascada, and a rider appeared. It was an Indian, mounted
on a little cream-colored pony. The diminutive creature plodded slowly
up the incline to the porch, weary as though it had traveled far that
day. The Indian slid from his horse as Dawn greeted him. It was Julio, a
boy who had worked for Damon in restoring Pueblo cave dwellings. He was
a nephew of the rain-priest.
Julio seated himself on the steps and Dawn asked him if he would have
food, but he shook his head gravely and courteously. The boss, her
father, where was he? Dawn explained that Damon had gone into town two
days after the storm and had not yet returned. They were expecting him
the next day. Julio remained quiet and reflective a while and then
turned to her and said in a manner both sorrowful and proud, “We have
found him, the Priest of the Rain. He has gone to the Dance Hall of the
Dead. For two days we have searched.”
Dawn was mystified. In reply to her eager questions Julio told the
story. “He was a great rainmaker, Mi-uchin,” he concluded devoutly.
“Never have we had such rain in our lifetime in response to prayer. For
one week he fasted and prayed in the mountains, and you saw—” He waved
his hand about the heavens.
“But none knew where he had gone or that he had gone. When he did not
return during the days following the rain, we came to search for him—I
leading the young men, for I thought I knew where he would be. But we
found him not there.—Mi-uchin gave his life in exchange for the rain,
for when at last it came it took him. He lay in the stream, washed, and
with a great happiness upon his face—” The boy fell silent. Dawn had no
further words; her tender pity had been sympathy enough.
At length the boy drew a deerskin pouch from his pocket. “I have brought
this for you,” he said. “It is a gift from our people for you.” He held
out a chain of white shell from which hung an emblem of turquoise mosaic
of unusual design. “For you,” Julio repeated, “because of your
friendship for our people. And that you have saved their land and their
water. The forest has held our secret since the boyhood of my
grandfather. That secret was shown to _you_. Take this.” He regarded
Dawn with a look of superstitious awe.
She took the luck emblem reverently. But, she told Julio, she had
already been more than repaid for the chance service she had been able
to do the pueblo. Long ago Mi-uchin had shown her the Source and the
ancient shaft of the Indian mine. She had known all the time where the
Indians came to get their silver and where they held their springtime
ceremonies. “But no one shall ever know from me,” she concluded.
“Mi-uchin knew that you were like a good tree,” said Julio, “the
heart-wood of which is sound. Once the heart decays the tree falls, the
forest falls. It is so with men. What is graven on the stout heart
remains there.
“The red men gave you the forest,” he said after a while, finding his
words with difficulty. “It is for you to keep it. I go. Good-by.”